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THE 



SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM 



By E. E. AIKEN. 



..-i- 



NEW HAVEN: 

PUBLISHED BY O. H. BRIGGS. 
1882 






Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1S82, 

By E. E. AIKEN, 

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 

Copyright transferred, June, 1882, to O. H. Briggs. 



TLTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR, PRINTERS, NEW HAVEN. 



PREFACE. 

A large part of this work first appeared as a series of 
five articles in the Yale Critic of 1882. The question 
discussed has been thought of sufficient importance to 
warrant republication in more permanent form, and ac- 
cordingly the articles have been revised and enlarged 
for this book. While the principles given are believed 
to be true for all communities, they have been discussed 
with especial reference to secret societies in colleges. 

Nev^ Haven, June, 1882. 



TO 

F. A. BECKWITH, 
YALE, '78. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction. 

Chapter I. Social Relations. 

II. Social Relations, Continued. 

III. iNTELLECTffAL INFLUENCE. 

IV. Political Relations. 
V. Political Influence. 

VI. Moral Value. 

VII. Relation to the Church. 

VIII. Opinions. 
Conclusion. 



INTRODUCTION. 

When one has enjoyed the advantages of the 
college course, it is no gracious task to make 
any public criticism involving the institution to 
which he owes so much, and which he has hon- 
ored and loved ; but there are principles of fidel- 
ity which transcend all personal considerations, 
and the statement of the truth is sometimes the 
highest service. Great and noble as our foster- 
mother is, it is in behalf of a larger and a nobler 
life within her walls, and in all other commun- 
ities as well, that these words are written. 

Still less gracious is it to utter criticism upon 
institutions whose honors and privileges one has 
shared, and whose trusts have been confided to 
his keeping; and perhaps, in view of the peculiar 
nature of the institutions in question, it will be 
simple justice for me to say, at the outset, that 
the organization, with whose membership I was 
honored in Senior year, was almost ideally per- 
fect, of its kind. I do not see how any organi- 
zation of that sort could have been much better. 

But institutions exist for men, not men for 
institutions; and though loyalty to an institu- 
tion is an important principle, yet loyalty to the 
truth is one far more sacred. Every man — par- 
ticularly every young man — must be granted the 
right to change his party with his convictions. 
The opposite principle stifles all freedom and 
honesty, and it may be added that secret socie- 
ties have a tendency to this which is not in their 
favor. The first principle was recognized in the 
many changes of party at the time of our late 



5 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

war. There were new circumstances, but new 
facts and principles should be as potent as new 
circumstances; perhaps more so. Luther doubt- 
ing-ly^ entered a monastery, and lived a monk for 
some years; but he was not thereby kept from 
speaking the truths of the Reformation. In 
English history, Charles James Fox was driven 
by his convictions "to detach himself from his 
early surroundings;" and "he dissolved his 
partnership with Sandwich and Wedderburn, 
and united himself to Burke and Chatham."^ 
So acted Mr. Gladstone, and English Protestants 
were surprised "when one who took so high a 
view of the duties and privileges of the Estab- 
lished Church, became, a generation later, an 
advocate for the disestablishment of the Irish 
branch of that church." ^ In 1845, ^^ form an 
impartial opinion, said Mr. Gladstone,* " I have 
separated myself from men with whom, and 
under whom, I have long acted in public life, 
and of whom I am bound to say * ^ that I 
continue to regard them with unaltered senti- 
ments both of public regard and private attach- 
ment." 

It is involved in this principle that the right 
of free discussion and action is in no way for- 
feited. It is limited by the obligation not to use 
against a party what has been confided to one 
as a member of it, and that obligation I shall 
always recognize. 

A discussion of this topic violates what has 
come to be one of the first rules of college eti- 

^ Life, p. g. 

^ Trevelyan's Early History of Fox, p. 452. 

^ Smith's Life of William Ewart Gladstone, p. 73. 

4 Do., do., pp. 85, 86. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 9 

quette ; but for this — not a light matter — there is 
ample warrant. Whether political or not, these 
institutions in college are practically public, 
not private; their influence, whether so intended 
by them or not, is a great, in some instances 
perhaps the great factor in college life; and 
every year they look for support from the incom- 
ing or lower classes. I hold that bodies of men 
have no right to establish institutions whose in- 
fluence is as public and far-reaching as that of 
those in question, and demand that nothing shall 
be publicly said about them. The right of free 
discussion of public matters is one of the guar- 
antees of our liberty, for which our fathers 
fought; *' one of the most precious and neces- 
sary rights of the individual, and one of the in- 
dispensable elements of all advancing humanity ; 
^ ^ ^ an element of all civil liberty," says 
Francis Lieber,^ the able and patriotic author of 
the work on civil liberty used as a text-book by 
the Yale seniors; and in the name of freedom 
I claim and exercise this full right. 

The need of some discussion of this subject 
rests on this principle : that men should under- 
stand the principles and tendencies of the insti- 
tutions which they are called on to support. 
Now under the class system, particularly, col- 
lege classes are held for years, without being in 
a position to understand its nature, which may 
even make some discussion of this a public 
duty. Graduates and college officers, also, often 
give the system active or virtual support, when 
it is probable that they would not, if they under- 

^ Civil Liberty, p. 87 ; see also Chapter XIII, on Pub- 
licity. 



lO THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

Stood its real character and influence. More- 
over, open debate is most healthful in its influ- 
ences ; it opens the windows of the mind and 
lets the truth come streaming in like the sun- 
light. 

It is unfortunate that none w^ho are identified 
with the system will enter the debate, though 
Baird does close his book on ^^Ainerican College 
Fraternities^'' with a defense cf them. But if 
none of their members will appear, this cannot 
be laid to the charge of any one else; and here, 
too, it may be added that this principle of refus- 
ing to appear before the tribunal of public opin- 
ion, is not in favor of the secret societies. The 
nature of them may afford some explanation of 
their silence; but this mode of proceeding is 
not in harmony with the spirit of republican 
institutions, and the societies should have good 
reason for doing that which, before the law, 
would certainly bring' judgment against them 
by default, if for no other reason. 



CHAPTER I. 

SOCIAL RELATIONS. 
— Sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh. — Shakspeare, 

The great normal organizations of human 
society are three: the family, the state, and the 
church. The school is another great institution, 
which may be placed here as coming next in im- 
portance. I propose to consider this subject 
somewhat in relation to each of these, and first, 
in its family and social relations. 

The college years lie between the breaking of 
old family and social ties and the forming of 
new ones. During this period, the existence 
of college societies "in some form is a neces- 
sary outgrowth of human nature." ^ Both in- 
tellectual and social instincts reach out for 
that satisfaction and development which is at- 
tained in association with one's fellows. Says 
Ex-Gov. Hawley, of Connecticut, '' the fitness 
and capacity for friendship, and the ability 
to attract and retain true friends, are as well 
subject to cultivation and improvement, as any 
quality or power of mind."^ Come now the 
secret societies, and offer to meet these wants; 
'* and in this culture " in friendship, continues 
Ex-Governor Hawley, " lies one of the chief 
values of the college fraternities." And accord- 
ing to Baird, ^ the ''constitutions of the widest 

^ Porter's American Collee^es, p. 194. 

2 Psi Upsilon Catalogue, p. x. 

^ American College Fraternities, pp. 197-198. 



12 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

and best known societies " would proclaim essen- 
tially the two objects of satisfying the intellectual 
and social nature. Let us consider the methods 
employed; we notice that a leading character- 
istic is secrecy; why are the societies secret.'^ 

I. The societies may possess truths of value, 
political, religious, scientific, social, or of some 
other kind. " There are mysteries within the 
INNER veil of our altars," writes a member of 
one organization,*^ ^' that none except the mem- 
bers of the fraternity are permitted to behold. 
Solemn and sublime truths are there inculcated, 
that have never reached the ear of any save those 
who have proved themselves worthy of the sacred 
trust." But when the origin of most of these 
societies is considered, their possession of such 
truths seems rather improbable; and in view of 
their limited membership, the claim of including 
either all or any large part of those able to ap- 
preciate them, seems equally unfounded. It is 
hard to see why such truths would not be as val- 
uable to the w^orld at large as to the societies; 
and if they would, the spirit which withholds 
them is wrong, and contradicts the very nature 
of truth, which is for all, like the sunlight. 
Says Lieber, " In the early stages of society it 
can be easily imagined that the ignorance and 
vehement superstition of the whole people at 
large should make it necessary to make of some 
great religious truth, for instance the belief in 
one God, perhaps introduced from some distant 
and more advanced region, a mystery, for fear 
that if not kept as such it would soon be entirely 

^ American Pamphlets, Yale Library, Vol. 3, Constitution 
of Lodge, I. O. O. F., p. 7. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 1 3 

eradicated. So likewise may certain scientific 
truths, militating with the common belief, be ex- 
posed to total extirpation by fanaticism, if not 
kept within a circle of initiated persons; but it 
seems that knowledge and religion with the 
white race have become so diffused that no such 
mysteries are any longer necessary, and that we 
are thus likewise spared the dangers to which 
these societies must always expose themselves 
as well as others." ^ 

2. Secrecy may be used to create and strength- 
en friendship. The binding force of a common 
secret is a well-known fact ; it rouses the in- 
stincts of fidelity and honor, and marks off its 
possessors as a circle by themselves, more or 
less distinctly according to its nature. Never- 
theless, though usually incidental to friendship, 
it is not its true foundation ; which is virtue, 
first, as Cicero repeatedly insists in his Essay on 
Friendship, and, second, adaptability of char- 
acter and purpose. The sharing of a secret 
makes a bond, but it is a very different one from 
that of a generous friendship. It is like the ex- 
ternal force which holds two soldiers together 
in the ranks, while they may be hating each 
other in their hearts. Neither does an artificial 
secrecy, as distinguished from the keeping of 
spontaneous confidence, materially strengthen 
friendship If the inward and spiritual bond 
exists, it will unite ; if it does not, the external 
and mechanical contrivance of secrecy can never 
take its place. 

3. The secrecy may be employed to exert the 
power of mystery over the outside world, the 

^ Political Ethics, 2d edition, Vol. II, p. 196. 



14 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

societies thus becoming '' invested with a facti- 
tious importance." ^ There is a wonderful power 
in mystery which makes the human mind sub- 
ject to its spell. Let it be known that Dick and 
Harry have a secret, and immediately all the 
other boys are agog to find out what it is. If it 
be very mysterious, it even holds their minds in 
a sort of awe under its power, until they can 
solve the mystery, when they are content. Bvit 
this operation does not often reflect any credit 
on the two boys; and if this is the purpose of 
the college secrecy, it is certainly an unworthy 
device to gain the dignity for an association 
which should be won by its own character and 
purpose ; for the importance here would depend 
entirely on the concealment, and not at all on 
the thing concealed. This might be commen- 
surate in dignity to the impression made, but it 
might also fall very much below it; and Presi- 
dent Porter therefore calls this importance ** fac- 
titious/' 

4. Secrecy may be intended to conceal doings 
which will not bear the light. To this Baird ^ 
replies that the concealment in college frater- 
nities is not sufficient. Certainly their secrecy is 
far from complete, but there is more than enough 
to meet the above purpose. His second reply 
is, "Given a number of college students, whose 
tastes, habits, antecedents and prospects are 
known, to determine what would be their actions 
when assembled together for their own purposes. 
The dullest college officer, the oldest trustee, 
could solve it immediately. We thus see this 

^ Porter's American Colleges, p. 195. 

2 American College Fraternities, pp. 196-197. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. I5 

great bar of secrecy removed and vanishing." 
But, unfortunately, we do not. For some insti- 
tutions this answer is satisfactory. It could not 
be supposed for a moment that the men who 
compose them would be united for such an ob- 
ject ; but this does not hold in many cases, and 
there is always the question as to which element 
of an organization controls. There can be no 
doubt that this is the use made of some secret 
organizations, and the opportunities afforded by 
secrecy are such as to make this in some in- 
stances its probable object. 

5. The secrecy may simply aim to secure the 
privacy required for social purposes. " To the 
question why any secrecy.?" Ex-Gov. Hawley 
replies,^ "why do even two friends habitually 
seek occasions to converse with each other 
only.?" It is true that privacy is usually a con- 
dition of society, and sharing of confidence, of 
friendship; but the condition is not the founda- 
tion, in either case. Whereas the secret society 
theory carries the principle too far, and so per- 
verts it, first by carrying the privacy and confi- 
dence over into an artificial secrecy, which is 
distinct from either of them, and second, by 
making this, apparently, the foundation of so- 
ciety and friendship. It is further urged that 
families and all other organizations hold secret 
conferences. In reply, if the societies resorted 
to secrecy as families and most organizations 
do, no objection could be made; but they do 
not. The family resorts to secrecy as an occas- 
ional expedient, dictated by circumstances; it 
has secrets, but it is not essentially a secret soci- 

^ Psi Upsilon Catalogue, p. xi. 



1 6 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

ety. Should it become such, the social life of 
the community would be spoiled. The secret 
society takes a true principle and perverts it. 
Instead of holding an occasional secret confer- 
ence, as circumstances require, it makes secrecv 
a ruling principle. Its secrecy is not occasional 
and temporary and natural, but artificial and 
permanent; which makes a wide difference. 
While the great proportion o experiences in 
family and friendship may be freely talked of, 
no mention of society experiences must be 
made. Further, the privacy is an ostentatious 
privacy; as if two friends should publish a no- 
tice that they were about to exchange confi- 
dences, and warn everybody off; thus violating 
the very spirit of privacy. The mistake rebuked 
by our Lord, in the case of those who sought 
divine communion on the corners of the streets, 
is paralleled in this method of seeking earthly 
communion. 

Now some of these objects are perfectly nat- 
ural and right : but to artificial secrecy as a 
means of obtaining them, there are grave ob- 
jections, on social grounds alone. Secrecy is 
not calculated to preserve that student character, 
"frank and transparent, open and fearless," 
around which friendships gather, and which 
President Porter apparently commends.^ There 
is a certain charm and romance about mystery, 
but it has also a strangeness and repression 
which chill and deaden social feeling. " Secrecy 
and concealment ever afford grounds for suspi- 
cion," a feeling most fatal to friendship. Our 
honored Ex-President Woolsey declares the 

^ American Colleges, p. 175. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 1 7 

secret system *' averse to the English character." 
In view of such considerations, the social value 
of an artificial secrecy is certainly open to very 
serious question. 

A second characteristic of this social system 
is its exclusiveness. On this point Ex-Governor 
Hawley says, " all men around us " have not " a 
right to complai^ that each does not freely bare 
his heart to all others."^ "It is not expected 
that " '' cordial, mutual pledges *' " shall be made 
to all; it is right to choose those to whom they 
shall be made." It is true that every social rela- 
tion must have its limits; but, speaking gener- 
ally, there are great natural principles which 
will mark them off without the use of exclusive- 
ness. " Birds-of a feather flock together," runs 
the proverb, and under the operation of this 
principle society will naturally adjust itself. 
Exclusiveness is a perversion of these princi- 
ples. As selfishness in the individual life per- 
verts the true principle of selfness, or proper 
regard for one's self, so exclusiveness makes 
precisely the same error in the social life, by 
making a selfish use of the social capacities. 
It is harder to detect, perhaps, because it is on 
the higher plane of social relations. But 
error is possible in every sphere of action, 
and because social relations are on a higher 
level than personal relations, error in them is 
none the less real. In general society, exclu- 
siveness is considered a wrong characteristic 
either of a. person or a set, and it should not be 
regarded more favorably when it is the charac- 
teristic of an organization. In this kind of or- 

^ Psi Upsilon Catalogue, p. xi. 



l8 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

ganization it does not spring altogether from 
smallness of numbers, which would characterize 
almost any circle of friends; but from want of 
flexibility ^nd naturalness in the method of 
choice, and from the secrecy which isolates its 
members. Hospitality, that great principle 
which throws the warmth and kindness of the 
family life around its guests, and diffuses those 
beneficent influences which make the atmosphere 
of a home, is offered by the societies most scan- / 
tily, or not at all ; in fact, is essentially contrary 
to their principles. The secret society is exclu- 
sive because it is inhospitable and uncommuni- 
cative, while its methods of choice almost always 
break the natural lines ot affinity and friendship. 
A third question may now be raised, perhaps 
reaching more deeply into the social relations 
of this subject than either of the others. Is a 
formal association of any kind, for social pur- 
poses, based on true principles ? A social object 
seems legitimate, and a formal association a 
proper method of attaining it; nevertheless, in 
most cases, I conceive this method to be an un- 
necessary and mistaken one. Ex-Governor 
Hawley says, ^ "There is a great positive value 
in the cordial, mutual pledges of confidence, 
assistance, trust, encouragement, equality, fidel- 
ity and honor." But as to social value, formal 
pledges are hollow, and cannot promote friend- 
ship, except as they express natural relations; 
as in that famous friendship which has charmed 
the world, ''Jonathan and David made a cove- 
nant, because he loved him as his own soul."* 

^ Psi Upsilon Catalogue, p. xi. 
2 I Samuel, xviii : 3. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. I9 

The covenant, however, sprang out of the friend- 
ship, not the friendship out of the covenant. 
The difference in the positions of the two friends, 
also, was a special reason for a covenant in their 
case. This can rarely be made on such a foun- 
dation of fitness for lasting friendship, and when 
the sorrowful discovery is made, as it frequently 
is, that such fitness does not exist, such a cove- 
nant forms a most awkward bond. The general 
truth is that the spiritual bond is the true one, 
and that covenants of friendship are unneces- 
sary ; the compacts are to be made for different 
ends. In a social club, it is very hard, in the 
first place, to make the formal lines correspond 
to the natural, relations, a difficulty much in- 
creased when the club is formed not by those 
whom it is to unite, but by others ; and, secondly, 
an element of selfishness easily creeps in which 
tends to demoralize the organization. I believe 
that in many college organizations now defunct, 
the first step to destruction was taken when the 
social element took the reins to the dethrone- 
ment of the intellectual. " I hate the prostitu- 
tion of the name of friendship to signify modish 
and worldly alliances," writes Emerson.^ "So- 
ciety is spoiled, if pains are taken, if the asso- 
ciates are brought a mile to meet." As living 
for happiness certainly defeats its own object, 
and the rule is to live for God, when happiness 
will come incidentally, so in most cases friend- 
ship thrives best without a formal organization, 
as an incident to associations for other purposes. 
These considerations have special force in a col- 
lege, whose very aim is to develop the highest 

^ Essays, ist Series, p. 188, 122. 



20 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

and truest character and relationship. It should 
be noted, however, that the argument against 
the present system does not depend on this last 
point. Even if the value of purely social organ- 
izations were admitted, many of the objections 
to this form of association would still hold. 

The three points already named properly de- 
fine a secret society as a secret and exclusive 
league. This may exist for several objects ; but 
I have considered it first in its social aspect, be- 
cause in this country, and particularly in the 
colleges, I believe this to be on the whole the 
prominent feature of the system, though it has 
also political and intellectual relations of im- 
portance. These organizations are essentially 
the same in college and out of it. There is 
much confusion of mind on this point; and 
many regard college societies as different from 
those without. So they are, in some respects. 
They do, to some extent, make homes instead 
of breaking them up, and they are much more 
intellectual. Nevertheless, these are only mod- 
ifications, not essential differences. In the great 
essentials above named the two are the same, 
and they have also many other characteristics 
in common. 

The working of this, as a social system, in 
college, may now be considered. Only those 
who have lived under the class system can un- 
derstand its power over the lower classes. With 
the sight of the pins, at the beginning of the 
course, curiosity is awakened, and already men 
begin to feel those influences which cast their 
mysterious shadow over the college life. *' Still 
waters run deep," and though an observer might 
not suspect it, many men are entirely subject to 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 21 

this mysterious power. They must form natural 
friendships, but they look for a day of separa- 
tion, and the shrewder ones are seeking to ar- 
range for that. Thinking that popularity has a 
high value, they are led to use their friends as 
stepping-stones. The tendency is to use the 
sacred relation of friendship in a struggle for 
position. If a man has good prospects, men 
count him their friend ; if not, they neglect him : 
and the hollowness of such friendship with the 
bitterness of such neglect need not be described. 
" Selfishness, an eye to business, vanity, frivolity, 
gluttony, and a love of mystery-mongering, con- 
cealed under the specious pretense of brotherly 
love, and longing for instruction — these are the 
motives that lead men into the lodge." ^ Give 
ambition a leading place, and omit one or two 
of the others, and these are the motives w^hich 
this system makes powerful in under-class life. 
When such motives control, as they often do, 
selfishness becomes supreme and friendship in- 
sincere. "Could the continuity of many of 
these societies," says President Porter,'^ *^from 
one college year to another, be broken up, the 
college life would be greatly ennobled." The 
principle of "every man for himself," ahvays 
too strong, is much intensified. A cordial, 
friendly spirit is killed, and many men graduate 
with an under-consciousness that they have 
never felt at home in college, and that a great 
part of the happiness of their college days has 
been somehow lost; natural results of a social 
system which I believe inherently selfish. A 

^ Heckethorn's Secret Societies, Vol. I, p. 389. 
^ American Colleges, p. 195. 



22 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

Yale paper once said editorially, ^ the societies 
*' furnish the chief incentive to that trickery 
which seams under-class life through and 
through, dividing it into castes, and engender- 
ing in it bitter and undying alienations." Any 
competition might develop something of this, 
but the insincerity and personal bitterness are 
largely due to the societies. 

Under the class system, fraternal feeling be- 
tween the classes is very much diminished. 
Class distinctions would always limit this, but 
many a friendship which would give pleasure 
and profit to both parties, is either prevented or 
put on such awkward terms as to make it really 
worthless. The under-class man, however dis- 
interested may be his regard for his society 
friend, feels as if he were somehow galvanized 
whenever he comes near him. Between the 
temptation to seek favor, and his resolve to main- 
tain his own self-respect, his real friendship has 
a hard time of it, and can get little or no devel- 
opment. If a society man takes an honor, his 
under-class friend feels that his position will 
not allow him to congratulate him. Moreover, 
if he thinks himself a candidate, and it is a sin- 
gular fact that most men privately do, he imag- 
ines himself the constant object of a critical 
inspection, which is quite enough to complete 
the galvanizing process above referred to. This 
is very unnatural, and there is here a general 
loss for which it is very doubtful if any gain 
wuthin the narrow society lines can atone. 

It would seem that the men in the societies 
could hardly fail to derive great benefits, both 

1 Va/e! Courayit, March 23, 187S. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 23 

in development of social qualities and of friend- 
ships, and in acquaintance with graduates. 
*' One of the most valuable adjuncts of a college 
life," says Ex-Governor Hawley, of his *' dearly 
beloved Psi Upsilon brotherhood." ^ But — and 
this point must be emphasized, for it is not un- 
derstood — graduates mistake in thanking the 
secret society for many friendships which they 
do not owe to that, essentially, but to natural 
relations in the college life. The society is 
largely the occasion, not the cause ; some other 
occasion would do nearly or quite as well. 
Drawbacks must also be found in the diversities 
of character often united. " Men have confessed 
to me," said a graduate of a Southern college, 
'' that they had as much love for the devil as for 
some of their fraternity associates." The feeling 
of what would be required by honor and loyalty 
to the fraternity would keep most men from be- 
traying any such sentiment ; but it seems certain 
that it must often exist. A college president 
writes, the societies *' put men socially, in regard 
to each other, into an artificial and false position. 
Their tendency is to lead men to associate only 
with a small number with whom they may have 
been thrown by accident, and to narrow the 
intellect and the feeling."^ There is also a loss 
in the isolation from the uninitiated. Tenny- 
son's verse, — 

— " he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be 
Shut out from Love," 

is fulfilled, both in the individuals who support 

^ Psi Upsilon Catalogue, p. x. 

^ Hitchcock's Reminiscences of Amherst, p. 323. 



24 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

this system, as society men, and in their organi- 
zations. There is, indeed, mutual forbearance, 
whereby many friendships with neutrals con- 
tinue; but never without some loss, while many 
are weakened and some broken. Some of this 
would exist under any system; but the societies 
are responsible for much jealousy and hatred in 
what should be an open, generous rivalry. 
Many men are not specially affected, but the 
general influence is to create a spirit of bitter- 
ness. "They have led to greater unkindness 
and ill-feeling than almost anything else in col- 
lege," says a college president. ^ It may be 
remarked here, that one feature helping to cre- 
ate the bitterness which prevails, is the wearing 
of badges; which is generally a violation both 
of good taste and good manners. Of good taste,, 
because manhood needs no badge of its nobility^ 
nor friends of their friendship; of good man- 
ners, because it is a constant reminder to others 
of distinction which they have failed to win. 
Said a Yale paper, though in a year of high feel- 
ing, "the popular attitude toward the senior 
societies is either bitterness or idolatry; ^ ^ 
bitterness if you did not go, idolatry if you 
did.'"^ With class societies, this is modified by 
old friendships, and much suppressed by pride 
and the consciousness of nearly every man, that 
he would have gone if he could. But a great 
deal of it exists. " The whole university of 
Cambridge," declares a Yale graduate, who spent 
five years there, "does not contain as much 
hatred, envy, malice and uncharitableness, and 
general ill-feeling, as an American college."^ 

^ Hitchcock's Reminiscences of Amherst, p. 324. 

2 Couj^ant, March 23, 1878. 

^ Bristed's Five Years in an English University, p. 415. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 25 

The class system is also responsible for the 
heart-breaking disappointments which sadden 
the college on election days, and for the general 
depression resulting from an exclusion so utter 
and so hopeless; while friends and classmates 
are gone in, each man feels himself left out in 
the cold, and forever. I do not regard this ar- 
gument as conclusive, because disappointment 
is incidental to a large part of life ; but an arti- 
ficial system must be judged by all of its effects, 
and this one is both deep at the time and far- 
reat:hing in its consequences. 

To the alumni there is both gain and loss, for 
another element in these organizations is their 
perpetuity. The distinctions made in college 
are life-long, and the element of secrecy must 
always keep them considerably marked. Such 
a fraternizing as that of Linonians and Brothers, 
at the former's Centennial in 1853, is inconceiv- 
able under the secret system. Outside the col- 
lege town some benefit may derived from the 
chaptered fraternities, and doubtless, as the years 
go by, the societies diminish and the college in- 
creases in importance with the graduates; but 
it seems evident that harmful barriers must long 
exist. Graduates living in their college town^ 
or returning to it, must find their societies pleas- 
ant. There is a legitimate demand for some- 
thing of this kind ; but limited and exclusive 
societies are certainlv very inadequate for meet- 
ing it, to say nothing of the positive harm 
done by reviving the old unpleasant feelings in 
the minds of neutral classmates. Many, per- 
haps, revisit their college who would not do so 
if it were not for the societies; but it is said 
that on the whole they have in this college di- 



26 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

minished the attendance at Commencement:. I 
can only speak generally here, but it seems very 
natural that the memories of exclusion, and the 
knowledge that it would still exist, should influ- 
ence many, perhaps unconsciously, to stay away, 
and indications have led me to believe that such 
is frequently the case. ''One alumnus of Yale 
cannot come back to his college with the same 
freedom and pleasure as" another, says a recent 
graduate, in reference to this system. Whether 
the loss overbalances the gain, in this particular, 
I do not undertake to say. 

Taking a general view of this as a social sys- 
tem, it has some advantages, but also grave de- 
fects ; and many of these are not incidental, but 
spring from its very nature. In general, even 
if the advantages to the members are incalcul- 
able, as it is said in some instances they are, a 
system which works good only to its members, 
and evil to the non-members, cannot be based 
on right principles. Such a system must con- 
tradict the principles of reciprocity and mutual 
helpfulness, on which life is founded. A literary 
or athletic association usually comes into rela- 
tions of mutual advantages with the public ; and, 
moreover, diffuses certain beneficial impulses. 
But a secret society diffuses nothing whatever; 
its very essential principle is to diffuse nothing. 
Again, if the friendship within were the greatest 
conceivable, the gain due to the society would 
be far less than the general loss. If one great 
object of this system is to promote fraternal 
feeling, as Baird says it is, taking its effect as a 
whole it signally fails. 



CHAPTER II. 

SOCIAL RELATIONS — CONTINUED. 

A ruddy drop of manly blood 

The surging sea outweighs, 
The world uncertain comes and goes, 

The lover rooted stays. 

— E??ierson. 

Few things are more delightful in experience, 
or more dear to memory, than the friendships 
of college days. Growing up between hearts 
young and noble, full of hope and enthusiasm, 
they fill college life with happiness, and their 
memory stays in tlie heart like some rare per- 
fume, fragrant till the last hours of life. 

The foundation of friendship is virtue. " It is 
Virtue alone that can give birth, strength and 
permanency to friendship," writes Cicero in his 
charming essay. ^ There is an attraction in 
virtue, that by a secret and irresistible bias, draws 
the general affections of those persons toward 
each other, in whom it appears toreside." Any 
friendship worth the name must be based on 
mutual respect. The second requisite is adapt- 
ability of character and purpose. Out of this 
spring the confidences which are so delightful 
and healthful to the whole nature, and which 
are confidences because there are very few within 
the reach of any one man who have followed out 
the deeper lines of experience which are parallel 
to his own, and so can understand and sympa- 
thize with him. True friendship, therefore, 

^ Essay on Friendship, pp. 305, 266. 



28 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

needs no exclusiveness ; rarely can any one en- 
ter its charmed circle, and he who can belongs 
there. "We talk of choosing our friends, but 
friends are self-elected." Nor do they need 
much contrivance for coming at one another. 
'* Friends also follow the laws of divine neces- 
sity ; they gravitate to each other, and cannot 
otherwise."^ "Genuine friendship, being pro- 
duced by the simple efficiency of nature's steady 
and immutable laws, resembles the source from 
whence it springs, and is forever permanent and 
unchangeable." ^ A third element usually enters 
into friendship — that of time; friends must be 
summered and wintered, known in adversity 
and prosperity, in many relations of life, before 
their affection is strong and permanent. Hence, 
organizations to promote friendship are a resort 
to unnatural and forcing processes, like those of 
the hot-house; whereas, true friendship is a 
hardy plant, and thrives best on the rugged soil 
of effort. 

Now the very organization of school and col- 
lege is most favorable to the growth of friend- 
ship. To begin with, the college itself is a great 
family. Its members are all chosen men at the 
start, and more and more as the years go by; 
and presumably gentlemen. They are at an age 
when lasting attachments are easily formed. 
Says Whewell, ^ "at that crisis of life, when the 
vigor of manly thought blends with the warmth 
of youthful susceptibility," the student "acquires 
a number of subjects of common interest, of 
agreeable retrospect, of endearing recollection ; 

^ Emerson's Essays, 2d series, p. 122. 
^ Cicero's Essay on Friendship, p. 250. 
2 University Education, p. 88. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 29 

and these points of union bind together the uni- 
versity men of the same standing by a tie which 
rarely loses its hold, or its charm, during their 
lives." The class organization of the American 
college is a strong bond between all its mem- 
bers. It takes the place of the college bond 
that unites the students in the various colleges 
which make up the English universities. Liv- 
ing in dormitories brings men into close and 
constant social relations. Multitudes of organ- 
izations unite still more closely — eating clubs, 
boating, ball and other athletic associations, the 
papers, musical clubs, religious, literary and art 
societies — all uniting men in ways most favor- 
able to friendship. Besides the more permanent 
clubs, temporary organizations of a more or less 
private nature easily spring up between those of 
like tastes, which attain the same ends. "The 
true type of a Cambridge club," writes a Har- 
vard graduate w^ho studied at Cambridge, " is 
one where a certain body of students, interested 
in one object, unite to carry out that object, and 
are ready to admit anybody who cares for it too, 
and want nobody who does not. And the per- 
fect example of these is in the clubs for athletic 
sports."^ This I believe the true system, under 
which social relations will be natural and spon- 
taneous, and a source of the highest benefit and 
happiness to the community. 

To these natural relations, under the princi- 
ples above given, students owe their friendships, 
and only to a very limited extent to artificial 
social systems. The life-long friendship between 
Ex-President Woolsey and Dr. Leonard Bacon 

^ Everett's On the Cam, pp. 182-183. 



30 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

was fostered in college by a club for reading 
poetry, in which they were joined with three or 
four others. When the Cambridge Union en- 
tered its new building, and Lord Houghton 
delivered the address, this ,was part of a pub- 
lished letter : 

Lord Houghton's beautiful reviving of those old days has 
in it something fragrant and sweet, and brings back old 
faces and old friendships very dear as life is drawing to its 
close. Yours, etc. Henry E. Manning. 

Imagine the friendships which must have 
grown up in days when Tennyson, Alford, 
Trench and Maurice belonged to the Union, 
and when a deputation, of which Arthur Hallam 
was one, was '' sent from the Union of Cam- 
bridge to the Union of Oxford "^ ^ to assert 
the right of Mr. Shelley to be considered a 
greater poet than Lord Byron ;" ^ and w-as enter- 
tained at Oxford ^'by a young student of the 
name of Gladstone." 

Goethe, who created the literature and per- 
haps led the thinking of Germany, and who 
speaks with the authority of a magnificent intel- 
lectual and social endowment, says of his uni- 
versity friends, '' Without the external forms, 
which do so much mischief in universities, we 
represented a society bound together by circum- 
stances and good feeling, which others might 
occasionally touch, but into which they could 
not intrude." '^ 

There is in Cambridge University a society, 
the Apostles, *' a strictly private club, and in no 

^ Cambridge Union Speeches, pp. 12. 13. 
'■^ Autobiography, p. 320. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 3 1 

way putting itself prominently forward," ^ usu- 
ally composed of thirteen members, of whom 
"■ all had a certain fondness for literary and met- 
aphysical pursuits in common;" who "did not 
make any parade of mystery, or aim at notoriety 
by any device to attract attention. "^ ^ did 
not have special chambers for meeting," and 
'* did not attempt to throw any awful veil of 
secrecy over their proceedings." It was known 
that they "' met to read essays and hold discus- 
sions, with occasional interludes of supper." 
Their "immediate and tangible influence in the 
University amounted to just nothing." Now it 
may not be well that such a club should be per- 
manent, all things considered; l;)ut if it is — and 
there are some advantages in permanence — some 
plan like the above would seem to be thetrue 
one. 

It may be urged that secret societies meet the 
legitimate demand for ordinary general society, 
by affording a common meeting-place for men 
of different classes, and graduates. This is 
partly true; but there is no demand here which 
could not be met by open clubs. A large part 
of it, also, is met by mixed society and by social 
occasions incident to college life; when mem- 
bers of the faculty, for instance, entertain stu- 
dents who take their optionals or who are in 
their divisions, as some of them do, the same or 
greater benefits may be derived with none of the 
evils. Officers of the college do not seem to 
realize how greatly they might thus increase the 
pleasure of the students, as well as their influ- 
ence over them in every direction. In one 

- Bristed's Five Years in an English University, pp. 

157, 158. 



32 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

aspect, the societies may express a demand for 
something of the kind suggested by President 
Porter, who says : '* Is it desirable that public 
parlors should be furnished, or places conven- 
ient for rendezvous and conversation?"^ and 
adds, *' an accessible and cheerful reading-room, 
amply furnished with the best newspapers and 
journals, should be esteemed a necessity, and if 
it were made attractive and tasteful in its ap- 
pointments, and supplied with retiring rooms 
for conversation, and could also be rigidly con- 
trolled by the rules of gentlemanly etiquette, 
would be a most desirable and useful agency in 
the college community." 

It is obvious that the societies supply such a 
want most inadequately. They are usually lim- 
ited to a few ; and if they were more numerous, 
society would still be divided into rigidly exclu- 
sive cliques, which could offer no hospitality to 
one another or to strangers. The University of 
Leyden has a great central house, of three stories, 
managed by the students, with reading-room, 
parlors for conversation, and other students' 
conveniences; which is open to the w^iole Uni- 
versity, and does much to unify the students. 
Such an institution would perhaps meet the 
want already noticed, of some place where grad- 
uates returning to the college might feel that 
they were welcome and at home. The Univer- 
sity Club, lately established in this college, may 
be regarded as a step in this direction ; but there 
are several reasons why, as yet, it does not by 
any means fill such a place. 
. Looking at the societies as meeting a demand 

^ American Colleges, p. 196. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. ^^ 

for club life, I do not believe this a legitimate 
demand in college, and not often elsewhere. 
The legitimate wants are sufficiently met by the 
college system and the natural associations 
growing out of it; while club life gives undue 
prominence to social and physical enjoyments^ 
as such, and is not calculated for the true ends 
of college life. This principle given by Presi- 
dent Porter applies equally here : " If college 
students are distributed in lodgings throughout 
the village or city they will form sets and asso- 
ciate in cliques, which, the more intimate and 
exclusive they are, are likely to become more 
narrowing, but they cannot partake of a general 
public life with its manifold cross and counter 
currents, its checks and counter checks, the in- 
fluence of which upon the plastic minds of active 
minded and sagacious youth is liberalizing in 
an eminent degree."^ Of the student, "it is 
not desirable that he should be restricted to the 
uncertain chances and narrowing influences of 
a private and exclusive clique." Dr. Howard 
Crosby says of club life, in its relation to the 
family, " The secrecy of the college society ren- 
ders it peculiarly adapted to be a rival to the 
family. Now a young man too easily learns the 
false and ^ad lesson that it is manly to slight 
domestic ties and substitute a species of club 
life in its place, and where that club-life takes 
on the fascinations of secrecy, the danger is 
greatly augmented."^ On this point may be 

^ American Colleges, pp. 187, 188. 

^ College Secret Societies, published by Ezra A. Cook, 
Chicago ; p. 33. 



34 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

given the following letter, published recently in 
the Boston Advertiser .•" ^ 

The undersigned, members of the Hasty Pudding club 
living in Cambridge, Boston and neighborhood, taking a 
hearty interest in its welfare, and regarding its character as 
of no slight importance, have observed with regret the at- 
tempts now making to raise funds for the erection of a 
house for the club. To provide the club with a house of its 
own, would be, in their judgment, likely to foster a mode 
of club life undesirable in itself, and inconsistent with the 
simple and pleasant traditions of the Hasty Pudding. 
They believe that such a change as would result from this 
innovation would prove injurious to the club, — by increas- 
ing the expenses of its members, and consequently limiting 
the range of selection, and making membership depend on 
other qualities than those of genuine good fellowship ; and, 
further, by exaggerating the importance of purely club in- 
terests, and thus promoting the tendency, at all times strong 
among undergraduates, to subordinate the real interests 
and objects of their college life to social pleasures and 
trivial occupations. 

The undersigned, therefore, earnestly beg their fellow 
graduate members of the Hasty Pudding club to consider 
whether they wish to aid in carrying out a design which 
cannot but greatly change the long-established character 
of the club, and which will endanger both its pleasantness 
and its usefulness. 

Charles F. Dunbar, C. E. Norton, 

John C. Gray, G. H. Palmer, 

J. B. Greenough, Francis G. Peabody, 

E. W. GuRNEY, A. T. Perkins, 

A. S. Hill, George Putnam, 

Archibald M. Howe, H. W. Putnam, 

H. Howland, J. B. Thayer, 

C. L. Jackson, Moses Williams, Jr. 
Arthur E. Jones, 
April 4, 1882. 

These include the Dean and ten other mem- 
bers of the Harvard faculty. It should, perhaps, 

^ Boston Daily Advertiser, April 10, 1882. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 35 

be added that the Advertisei- of April 26th con- 
tained a reply from an active member of the 
club, and promised one from graduate members; 
but, up to June 2, no further communication on 
this subject had been printed in the Advertiser, 

Student friendships, then, do not need secret 
societies. Great natural and healthy forces 
work in association and friendship which will 
secure all right ends without calling in the 
doubtful aid of secrecy and exclusiveness. 
Viewed as taking the place of general society, 
the societies are inadequate, besides being open 
to other objections ; as promoting club life, they 
foster a demand which is not legitimate. 

The discussion has thus far considered this sys- 
tem as social, because, on the whole, that is its 
most prominent feature, though particular socie- 
ties may be chiefly literary or political. The in- 
troduction to the catalogue of Psi Upsilon, from 
which some of Ex-Gov. Hawley's words have 
been quoted, dwells mainly on this. Baird does 
the same. ^ Prof. Coe, in his article on the 
Literary Societies of Yale, says that the secret 
societies were " the expression of a want long 
felt in the larger bodies ; the want of sociability?' 
^' Class societies flourished "^ ^ because they 
knew how to promote friendship and friendly 
sociability, whether they conferred intellectual 
and moral benefits or not." 

^ American College Fraternities, circ. p. 195. 
^ History of Yale College, p. 322. 



CHAPTER III. 

INTELLECTUAL RELATIONS. 

Wisdom is better than rubies. — Solomon. 

The secret societies are claimed to be substi- 
tutes for the literary societies. On this view of 
the case, partly a true one, several things are ob- 
vious. The first is, that they are usually limited 
to a few, an objection which their advantages 
should be very great to atone for. Selectness 
and privacy, it may be said, give opportunity 
for free and sympathetic discussion and criti- 
cism. But this advantage must be largely over- 
set by the usual combination of so many heter- 
ogeneous elements, the advantages of which can 
hardly be literary, whatever else they may be. 
The societies are generally — not always — some- 
what political in character, and seek men prom- 
inent in various ways. Hence those who would 
make the strength of a literary society are usu- 
ally scattered through several clubs, and mixed 
up with men of very small literary taste and 
sympathy. The spirit of these institutions tends 
strongly to become political or social ; neither 
being at all favorable to a literary spirit. Still 
deeper objections are that secrecy and exclusive- 
ness are hostile to the growth of the love of 
truth, which by its very nature is diffusive, and, 
like friendship, more vigorous in the open air 
than in the hot-house. Then, too, while a select 
circle has some literary advantages, they are not 
those of public debate. The latter give oppor- 
tunity for those trials of intellectual strength 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 37 

which make the mind strong and active and 
ready, as athletic contests do the body. Before 
the Alumni meeting at the Yale commencement 
of 1873, Hon. William M. Evarts said that the 
great debating societies of Yale " furnished for 
the field for open and manly debate what could 
not be found in the small numbers and limited 
opportunities of the secret societies. They pre- 
pared the young man to withstand frowns and 
hisses as well as applause, and turned out men 
who could meet an adversary in debate without 
flinching. All this is wanting now, and cannot 
be supplied unless the old societies can be res- 
urrected." ^ In the debating societies of Cam- 
bridge and Oxford, says George William Curtis, 
'' the long illustrious list of notdd and able Eng- 
lishmen were trained, and in the only way that 
manly minds can be trained, by open, free, gen- 
erous rivalry and collision."^ Public audiences 
are needed, also, to develop the patriotism and 
public feeling which are among the best ele- 
ments of debate, as well as its inspiration. 
Lieber declares that "publicity is indispensable 
to eloquence. No one speaks well in secret be- 
fore a few."^ " Truth for the world " is uncon- 
sciously the thought of the young orator, and 
well it may be; for at the fountain-heads of in- 
fluence, among young men in school and col- 
lege, these discussions often have immeasurable 
results. " A debate whether Pope or Words- 
worth was the greater poet," said the Spectator^ 
in reference to the Cambridge Union,* "whether 

^ Hartford Courant, June 26, 1873. 

^ Harper's Monthly, January, 1874. 

^ Civil Liberty, p. 134. 

^ Cambridge Union Speeches, pp. 59-60. 



38 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

Greece or Rome had exercised the most benefi- 
cial influence on the world, whether Carlyle or 
Mill were the truer teacher, has often, we feel no 
doubt, done more to determine the future lives 
of great men, and through them the future of 
England, than hundreds of so-called ' practical ' 
debates in the House of Commons." There is a 
further loss in the ignorance of parliamentary 
law, to the study of which the nature of secret 
societies is not often favorable. For these losses 
a private literary club has some compensations; 
but in the secret society system they are reduced 
to a minimum. 

That secret societies break up the literary so-^ 
cieties, and do not merely supplement them, I 
think is beyondquestion. Baird practically ad- 
mits it.^ '' A radical change," says Professor 
Tyler, of Amherst, " has come over the old lite- 
rary societies in all the colleges, leaving them 
little else than a name."^ In 1845, the literary 
societies of Amherst "had long been altogether 
secondary in interest to the ' Greek Letter Fra- 
ternities,' which had in fact drawn their very life- 
blood out of them ;"^ and though the former still 
survive, they are said to be half dying. Dr. 
Howard Crosby says, '^ I believe that I am right 
in asserting that in most of our colleges the lit- 
erary societies (most important helps to the stu- 
dent in composition and oratory) have been ut- 
terly ruined, except as alumni centers, by the se- 
cret societies."* Secret societies are not allowed 

^ American College Fraternities, circ. p. 195. 
^ History of Amherst College, p. 316. 
3 Do., p. 314. 

^ College Secret Societies, published by Ezra A. Cook, 
Chicago ; p. 35. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 39 

at Princeton, and the great literary societies are 
flourishing; both secret, indeed, but as both are 
purely literary, and membership is open to 
every college man, the evils of secrecy are com- 
paratively small. '' The rise of the new Greek 
Letter Fraternities,"* also says Prof. Tyler, " has 
obscured the light and glory of the old literary 
societies in nearly all the colleges. In Yale col- 
lege, the Linonian and the Brothers, which, like 
rival queens, reigned in the hearts of so many 
generations of students, have thus been extin- 
guished." Ex-President Woolsey holds the 
same opinion. Mr. Evarts, in the speech above 
referred to, "advocated the revival of the old 
societies and the suppression of the foolish se- 
cret clubs which have supplanted them." This 
last is denied, however; and Prof Coe^ names 
several causes, as the rise of the athletic system, 
the development of the curriculum, and a loss 
of interest in public speaking. Doubtless these 
had some influence; but no one of them, nor all 
together, have been as potent as the secret so- 
cieties. This became evident when Linonia was 
revived in '78. The society started with a great 
deal of enthusiasm ; but many of the best men 
had their society interest centered elsewhere. 
Less prominent men felt this, and could not con- 
tinue to be cordially united with them, partly 
because of the barriers between, partly because 
they felt that Linonia was regarded as second- 
rate. The devotion and loyalty which are the 
life of a society could not be developed. Prob- 
ably finding that two societies took up too much 

^ History of Amherst College, p. 630. 
2 History of Yale College, p. 322. 



40 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

time, and caring more for others than for Linonia, 
the society men also began to dropoff. Another 
reason, due especially to the class system, was 
the peculiar feeling between classes. Instead of 
being '*the gala night of all the week,"^ as in the 
olden time, when all classes met ''on a footing of 
perfect equality, though the Seniors naturally 
took the lead," all the under-class men felt them- 
selves under the power of that peculiar bedevil- 
ment emanating from a society man which piles 
barriers mountain high above them, and makes 
them, supposing themselves the objects of cold 
and critical attention, hardly dare to open their 
mouths. So they felt it was no place for them ; 
the enthusiastic leaders of the movement had 
raised up no successors, and for these and kin- 
dred reasons the society dwindled till its death. 
Had its members thrown away their pins, and 
made it the centre of their society life, I believe 
Linonia would have been strong to-day. What- 
ever good the secret societies may have done, 
the destruction of the literary societies, a very 
serious loss, is chiefly due to them. 

The value of literary societies is so generally 
admitted that its discussion may be unnecessary ; 
but as this college generation, unfortunately, 
knows little of them, it may well be noticed. 
Most apparent among their advantages is that 
of training in public speaking. This is some- 
times decried, as an accomplishment of an ear- 
lier and less civilized age; but wrongly. Ora- 
tory is perhaps the noblest of arts. Neither De- 
mosthenes nor Cicero belonged to an unculti- 
vated age. Daniel Webster can hardly be rele- 

^ Four Years at Yale, p. 200. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 4 1 

gated to an uncivilized generation; and Eng- 
land might never have seen the great Liberal 
victories of recent times had it not been for Mr. 
Gladstone's peerless eloquence. That the in- 
crease of printing and other causes have some- 
what lessened the demand for public speaking 
may be true, but the time will never come when 
men will not demand the personal power of ora- 
tory, and be for it both wiser and better. One 
good campaign speaker will accomplish more 
than tons of printed speeches. 

Public speaking is especially important under 
the constitutional forms of Anglican liberty. 
^' A most important feature of Anglican pub- 
licity of legislative, judicial and of many of the 
common administrative transactions," says Lie- 
ber.^ *' Modern centralized absolutism has de- 
veloped a system of writing and secrecy, and 
consequent formalism, abhorrent to free citizens 
who exist and feed upon the living word of lib- 
erty. Bureaucracy is founded upon writing, 
liberty on the breathing word. * * * I do 
not believe that a high degree of liberty can be 
imagined without widely pervading orality." 
*' If civil liberty demands representative legisla- 
tive bodies, which it assuredly does, these bodies 
have no meaning without exchange and mutual 
modification of ideas, without debate, and actual 
debate requires the spoken word. I consider it 
an evil hour, not only for eloquence, but for 
liberty itself, when our Senate first permitted 
one of its members to read his speeches, on ac- 
count of some infirmity. The true principle has 
now been abandoned," in Congress. Speaking 

^ Civil Liberty, pp. 128, 129, 134. 



42 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

is a large part, also, of two out of the three great 
professions. Public speaking, therefore, is in 
demand, and will be; at the bar, in the pulpit, 
on the platform, in the carrying on of govern- 
ment, on a thousand occasions of public life. 

Kindred wnth these advantages is that of learn- 
ing parliamentary law, which cannot well be 
mastered except by practice; and with which, in 
a country of constitutional forms, every free- 
man, above all, every educated freeman, who is 
always likely to be a public man, ought to be 
familiar. Of this the athletic meetings teach 
little or nothing, though the case is not always 
as bad as when the president of Yale's leading 
athletic club dismissed a meeting with the re- 
mark, " I say, fellows, let's adjourn !" 

The public college life which was one of their 
great advantages has not disappeared with the 
literary societies ; to a large extent it has gath- 
ered around the athletic system, and though it is 
now^ probably carried too far, it has features of 
considerable value. It interests many men 
w^hom a literary system w^ould not, it forms a 
more general bond of union between the students, 
and its inter-collegiate relations give it a wider 
scope; each college struggling for the suprem- 
acy in athletics almost as vigorously as ever 
Athens or Sparta did for the political suprem- 
acy. But literary societies would claim the alle- 
giance of many — and these often the more 
thoughtful — men when athletics do not and can 
not ; and there is also a large part of the year 
when athletics are quiescent. Another point 
may be made here, from the Pall Mall Gazette^ 
also referring to the Cambridge Union -} "The 

^ Cambridge Union Speeches, pp. 71, 72. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 43 

general, seducing, and ultimately destructive 
temptation to youth is the animal temptation — 
the temptation to enjoy early life in the pursuit of 
the coarsest and simplest gratifications, whether 
innocent or the reverse. * ^ Every student 
who turns from the wine-party, or the card- 
table, or the hunt, aye, or the cricket-field, or the 
river, to study a speech for the Union, or to 
make himself master of the arguments of others 
there, is exchanging a worse for a better thing, 
as the general rule. Exceptions there maybe in 
abundance, but such is the law. On this prin- 
ciple, as on a rock, these debating societies rest, 
and must continue to rest until either some bet- 
ter substitute is invented, or the lower part of 
our nature establishes a recognized supremacy 
over the higher. But he would greatly under- 
state their case who should simply rest it here.'* 
Beyond the value of the information attained 
and the principles taught, important as these 
are, there is a further advantage, perhaps beyond 
all others. This is the intellectual vivifying 
and broadening and clearing which comes of the 
influence of mind over mind, and which few 
things effect as well as a good discussion. This 
can often be exerted far more powerfully by a 
fellow student than by an instructor; the boy is 
sent to school, and the school-boys educate him. 
The instructor is in a different sphere of 
thought, so far away from his pupils, often, 
that they catch no inspiration from him; while 
from a vigorous, progressive mind, working 
along the same lines with themselves, they often 
receive unmeasured impulses to like vigor and 
progress. So said Lord Houghton;^ "the great 

^ Cambridge Union Speeches, p. i8. 



44 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

gain ^ ^ is in the fair conflict of intel- 
lects; it is in the meeting of man and man, of 
mind and mind." The Spectator^ also :^ '^ With- 
out the ' mere talk ' of young men's theoretical 
discussions, the collision of taste with taste, of 
intellect with intellect, of conscience with con- 
science, of spirit with spirit, the characters of the 
best men in the nation would scarcely come to 
the birth at all." Those who witnessed the re- 
cent attempt to revive Linonia, at Yale, wnll re- 
member the interest taken by many prominent 
graduates, and their strong testimony to the 
value of the literary societies. "Mr. Evarts,"said 
an editorial in the Hartford Courant, containing 
the speech by him mentioned above, " who has 
few equals and no superiors as a ready thinker 
and talker, attributes no small degree of his 
great success to the training of these societies ; 
and the same may be said of the ablest men who 
have been graduated from Yale during the last 
century." At Linonia's centennial, in 1853, Mr. 
Evarts said in his oration : " I speak but the 
common sentiment of the graduates and friends 
of Yale college, and of all others who have had 
occasion to compare the system of education 
here, and its results, with the methods of other 
universities, when I attribute no small share of 
the permanent hold upon the confidence and re- 
spect of the w^hole country, which this university 
has ever retained, to the influence of these great 
literary societies; when I ascribe to the impulse 
and the bent given to young minds in their 
arena, no trivial portion of the service which in 
every prorince of public activity the scholars of 

^ Cambridge Union Speeches, pp. 54-55. 



I 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 45 

this discipline have rendered to their genera- 
tion." 

It may be worthy of notice that while the ad- 
vantages of literary societies much outweigh 
their evils, some of these must be admitted. 
They may trench somewhat upon the regular 
studies; yet not often seriously. The best 
speakers are very generally the best students. 
Lord Houghton, in the address already referred 
to, spoke of the time when Tennyson, Hallam, 
Trench, Alford, Spedding, Merivale, Kemble, 
Kinglake, Maurice, were at Cambridge, saying, 
*' Of these men, all, I believe, were members of 
the Cambridge Union society, and most of them 
active participants in its debates,"^ and met this 
very objection by adding, " The majority of these 
men won your highest honors, and at the same 
time were tlie best speakers in the Union." 
Literary societies may sometimes encourage 
superficiality ; but if there is anything which 
will leave the ordinary man with a more pro- 
found respect for the opinions of others, and 
a deeper sense of how little he knows, than 
a good discussion, it is rarely found. The 
Spectator may here be quoted again :^ ^^ De- 
bating societies for young men are not, prop- 
erly speaking, schools of loquacity at all. There 
is an age — the university age — when adequate 
speech on the various motives and ends of life 
becomes something altogether beyond mere 
speech, the natural work, the appropriate ac- 
tion, the characteristic energy of the mind — and 
when there is every reason for aiding this ex- 

^ Cambridge Union Speeches, p. 11. 
2 Do., pp. 54, 59. 



46 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

pressive crystallization of thought and feeling ; 
^ * an age at which theoretical discussions 
ought to be, if they are not, the very means of 
life and growth, when it is as silly to call such 
discussions mere talk, as it is in later life to call 
a cabinet council " such. *^ This is not talk, it is 
preparation for action, it is the stringing up and 
organization of intellectual energy, it is intel- 
lectual volition." 

Some value is claimed for the secret societies, 
particularly under the class system, as raising 
scholarship by exciting emulation. Not dwell- 
ing now on the important truth that the desire 
to beat, or to win position, is not the true foun- 
dation of scholarship, which knows far nobler 
ends : taking into account the dropping off in 
the later years of the course, and the general 
society influence, it is very doubtful if the final 
result would show much gain. " We regard 
their influence as unfavorable upon the pre- 
scribed course of study,"^ says a college Presi- 
dent. " College secret societies interfere with a 
faithful course of study," says Dr. Crosby.^ ** I 
always found the best students were those who 
either kept out of the secret societies, or who 
entered very slightly into their operations." 

With the class system, especially, the general 
eff'ect of the societies upon college thought is de- 
pressing. This cast-iron system, with its silence, 
its repression, its apparent spirit of criticizing 
men, is fatal to the spirit of freedom and prog- 
ress which is the spring of enthusiasm, and of 
that buoyant intellectual life which comes forth 

^ Hitchcock's Reminiscences of Amherst College, p. 323. 
2 College Secret Societies, as above : p. 34. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 47 

sparkling in poetry or surging in oratory. Un- 
reality, fascinating mystery, an eager struggle 
for three years, and silent exclusion with its 
consequent bitterness, make no soil for poetry 
or eloquence or scholarship or letters. 

Considered from the intellectual standpoint, 
therefore, the secret societies do not fill the place 
of the literary societies. For the destruction of 
the latter they are chiefly responsible, and in 
this destruction there have been lost educational 
institutions of great value. The societies do not 
help scholarship, on the whole, and they lie like 
a heavy weight on the young intellectual life of 
the college, repressing hope and enthusiasm, and 
taking away the liberty out of which arises 
thought and " oratory — the aesthetics of liberty." 



CHAPTER IV. 

POLITICAL RELATIONS. 

Of old sat Freedom on the heights, 
The thunders breaking at her feet : 

Abov^e her shook the starry lights : 
She heard the torrents meet. 

— Temtyson. 

The societies may be political, or they may 
not. They may first be considered as polit- 
ical. 

Under a despotism, political secret societies 
may furnish the only means whereby the Spirit 
of freedom can be kept alive, or resistance to 
tyranny maintained. Where the freedom of the 
press and the right of assocjation do not exist, 
as in Russia, they seem almost a necessary agency 
for organization and for the promulgation of 
ideas. They probably had a great influence 
in disseminating the ideas and influences which 
led to the European revolutions of this century. 
They were "the secret conventicles of indepen- 
-- dent thought.'" The Carbonari and the Young 
Italy, of which the latter was the creation of 
Mazzini's genius for the liberation of Italy, 
" kept alive for half a century, by their secret 
meetings and their secret correspondence, the 
spirit of resistance to foreign domination."^ 
Yet even here, for reasons which will appear, 
they are probably admissible only as a last re- 
sort ; and it has been noticed that England and 

^ Frost's Secret Societies of the European Revolution, 
Vol. I, p. 304. 

2 Do., Vol. II, p. T99. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 49 

Switzerland, countries which have won and kept 
more freedom than any others in Europe, have 
made least use of such agencies. Open agita- 
tion, as explained in passages already quoted 
from Lieber, is the method of A-nglican liberty, 
whose freedom is the most perfect known. 

The circumstances which would justify a rev- 
olution would also justify and usually necessi- 
tate secret organization. The object could hardly 
be reached in any other way. When the govern- 
ment was weak, again, some private organiza- 
tion might be needed for mutual protection, like 
the citizens' Vigilance Committee of San Fran- 
cisco, in the old days of violence in that city. 
Such organizations, says Lieber, '*are generally 
and necessarily for a time secret societies."^ 
But plainly both of these are exceptional cases, 
like those which warrant the suspension of the 
writ of habeas corpus. 

In free countries the case is quite different. 

1. The multiplying of parties tends to disun- 
ion and bitterness. Says Burke, the " artificial 
division of mankind, into separate societies, is a 
perpetual source in itself of hatred and dissen- 
sion among them." '^ Secrecy and exclusiveness 
much strengthen these effects. There is a con- 
stant jealousy and distrust, which easily ripens 
into bitter animosity. 

2. In relation to the general government, they 
tend to exalt society over public allegiance, and 
to diminish public spirit. Their peculiar claims 
are calculated to weaken the public attachment. 
Says President Fairchild, of Oberlin, ^ ** Every 

^ Poliiical Ethics, 2d edition, Vol. II, p. 195. 

2 Works, Vol. I, p. 22. 

^ Moral Philosophy, p. 271. 



50 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

organization, political or social, which tends to 
clannishness, weakens the common interest, and 
diminishes the proper national feeling, is incon- 
sistent with the highest patriotism. Secret polit- 
ical and social organizations, as existing in this 
and other lands, seem to be of this nature. 
They tend to disorganize society, to sunder the 
ties upon which national unity depends." 

3. Parties properly represent principles, not 
men ; men only as they stand for principles. 
All parties easily forget this, but where they do 
not stand on public platforms, as secret societies 
do not, the tendency is very strong for them to 
become cliques, struggling only for power. The 
committee of the New York Senate, on Ma- 
sonry, said in their report, *'The opposers of 
Masonry at the West entertain no doubt that 
the institution was originally intended, and is 
now kept up, for the sole purpose of securing to 
its members, unjust advantages over their fellow- 
citizens, in the various concerns of life, but 
chiefly with the view of facilitating their acqui- 
sition of political power." ^ 

4. Secret societies are exposed to a further 
special danger, that of intrigue and corruption. 
At the time of the Morgan excitement, Mr. 
Golden, ex-Mayor of New York, who had been 
"elevated to the highest honors of Masonry,'^ 
and was "a citizen highly respected for his 
talents and character," wrote a letter giving his 
reasons for opposing Masonry, and among others 
mentioned "the peculiar adaptedness of Masonry 
to purposes of political intrigue and corrup- 
tion."^ 

^ Report in Vol. 91, of College Pamphlets, Yale Li- 
brary, p. 14. 
2 Do., do., p. 21. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 5 1 

5. Political secret societies dispel the confi- 
dence essential to the stability of government. 
They are a perversion of the caucus principle, 
itself probably legitimate within certain limits, 
though doubtless often abused. '' Confidence is 
indispensable for the government of free coun- 
tries — it is the soul of loyalty in jealous free- 
men," says Lieber.^ " This necessary influence 
is two-fold — confidence in the government, and 
confidence of society in itself It is with refer- 
ence to the latter that secret political societies 
in free countries are essentially injurious to all 
liberty." The committee already referred to 
said in their report that the people were jealous 
of combinations '^for purposes either unknown 
or known to affect improperly, the even and 
healthful current of our political affairs," and 
proposed to withhold "political support from 
all its members indiscriminately, until they shall 
sunder their obligations to that institution (Ma- 
sonry) and to each other, and return with us 
upon equal footing into the social compact."^ 

6. '' All secret associations," says Edward 
Everett, " particularly all such as resort to the 
aid of secret oaths, are peculiarly at war with 
the genius of a republican government." " They 
are intrinsically hostile to liberty," says Lieber.* 
'* They are, as all secret societies must inherently 
be, submissive to secret superior will and decis- 
ion, — a great danger in politics, — and unjust to 
the rest of the citizens, by deciding on public 
measures and men without the trial of public 
discussion, and by bringing the influence of a 

^ Civil Libert)% p. 135. 

^ Report as above, p. 12. 

2 Civil Liberty, pp. 128, 135. 



52 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

secretly united body to bear on the decision or 
election. Secret societies in free countries are 
cancers against which history teaches us that 
men who value their freedom ought to guard 
themselves most attentively." The expounder 
of our Constitution, Daniel Webster, asserts 
that "All secret associations, the members of 
which take upon themselves extraordinary obli- 
gations to one another and are bound together 
by secret oaths, are naturally sources of jealousy 
and just alarm to others, are especially unfavor- 
able to harmony and mutual confidence among 
men living together under popular institutions, 
and are dangerous to the general cause of civil 
liberty and good government." 

The societies may not be political. This would 
much better the case ; but many of the above 
objections would still hold. While maintaining 
secrecy, they must still have political signifi- 
cance. It is not known that they are not polit- 
ical ; hence they still create dissension and dis- 
pel confidence. Their members are often sup- 
posed to be backed by the organization, and 
therefore have precisely the same influence as if 
they were, sometimes, perhaps, without knowing 
it. There is also a strong tendency within the 
society itself to exert its latent power in politics, 
particularly at certain crises. These last points 
were illustrated at the time of the Morgan ex- 
citement. It is doubtful if Masonry was ever a 
political society in this country, though it was 
made such in Mexico. Yet it had exerted so 
much political influence, in one way and another, 
as to cause the formation of a national party 
against it, on such grounds as this, that while 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 53 

Masonry comprised one-ninth of the voting pop- 
ulation of the State of New York, its members 
held three-fourths of the offices. If it had not 
become political, it was nevertheless regarded 
as such. Many of the above objections, there- 
fore, apply to non-political societies, though not 
to the same degree. 

The societies may be viewed as that union of 
the political and social called an aristocracy, 
and this is probably their truest aspect. Secrecy, 
exclusiveness, and badges are the expression of 
an aristocratic spirit. In the letter already men- 
tioned, Ex-Mayor Golden said, "' Foreigners 
must think we are not less fond of the show and 
trapping, and titles of aristocracy and royalty, 
than any other people, when they see that we are 
so eager to adopt them, in the only way tolerated 
by our political institutions."^ Their strength 
and w^eakness is almost exactly that of an aris- 
tocracy. They generally seem to aim at pres- 
tige and power by the choice of prominent men. 
They "would of course have little prestige," 
says President Hitchcock, of Amherst, "were 
they not strongly exclusive, so as in fact to leave 
out a majority of the students, nor unless those 
selected embraced the elite as to scholarship.'"^ 
" Everything for the few, nothing for the many," 
is an aristocracy, the world over; and that is 
the essential principle of these societies. Plainly 
this is true as to social and literary advantages ; 
and, for reasons already given, it is often true 
politically. 

In this land and age, itself in one aspect a 
glorious refutation of aristocratic principles, it 

^ Report as above, p. 21-22. 

■^ Reminiscences of Amherst College, p. 320. 



54 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

can hardly be necessary to dwell on the larger 
truths of republicanism, or the objections to 
aristocracy. Its social aspect has been already 
considered ; I only add here that, like every aris- 
tocracy, it has its advantages, sometimes of a 
very noble kind. That is a poor idea of an aris- 
tocracy which limits these to food and clothing, 
houses and carriages. But much nobler things 
may be misused, as already explained. The 
"glorious good-fellowship" of college would 
be far more glorious and much more of a real 
fellowship, to say nothing of its goodness, with- 
out the aristocratic element; which means sel- 
fishness, in plain English, and w^hich really does 
not belong to it at all. The nobler spirits are 
united in a natural aristocracy, which needs no 
external forms; and their due influence class- 
mates are ready and glad to recognize. "Within 
the ethnical circle of good society," writes 
Emerson, " there is a narrower and higher circle, 
concentration of its light, and flower of courtesy, 
to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride 
and reference, as to its inner and imperial 
court, the parliament of love and chivalry."^ 
Politically, aristocracy means what John Stuart 
Mill calls " the monster evil — the over-ruling 
influence of oligarchy,"^ establishing an op- 
pression more or less grievous. The kind of 
oppression here is what Lieber means when he 
says, " Oppression does not come from govern- 
ment or official bodies alone. The worst oppres- 
sion is of a social character, or by a multitude." ^ 

^ Essays, 2d series, p. i6o. 

^ Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. IV, p. 39. 

' Civil Liberty, p. 88. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 55 

As aristocracies, these societies are an anachro- 
nism. They abandon the free and progressive 
ideas of modern civilization, and go back to the 
narrow and selfish and unprogressive systems 
of mediaeval times. 



CHAPTER V. 

POLITICAL INFLUENCE. 

— Where's the manly spirit 
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone? 
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit 
Their names alone? 

— Whittier, 

These political principles hold in college, as 
elsewhere, and work the same effects, though 
with some modifications. Here also, as parties, 
the societies tend to dispel confidence, to sow 
dissension, and to undermine republican prin- 
ciples; as aristocracies, they exalt the few at 
the expense of the many, by giving them undue 
political influence and by creating exclusive 
cliques which monopolize social and literary 
advantages. 

The relation between classes under the class 
system is one of its great objections. The fact 
that the odious word " supe " is one of the most 
familiar in the Yale undergraduate vocabulary, 
tells the whole story. Freshmen ordinarily do 
not understand this great factor in college life, 
but gradually they begin to feel its mysterious 
power, and by the spring of Junior year men 
hardly dare "to say their souls are their own," 
as the current phrase runs. So subtle is this in- 
fluence that it often has complete mastery, 
though one who had not felt its power would 
not suspect it. It is omnipresent, making itself 
felt in the smallest details. It was once reported 
in Yale and generally believed that a prominent 
disappointed candidate said that he had bought 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 57 

three new suits of clothes that spring, to "im- 
prove his chances." If a man subscribes well to 
college athletics, it will be hinted that he is 
"suping;" and sometimes, probably, he is. A 
man dares not congratulate his society friend in 
the upper classes on their successes; if he does, 
he will be "suping." 

These things are only incidents in a system of 
domination over the minds of men which is ab- 
horrent to the spirit of freedom. Class societies 
" lead younger students," says a prominent grad- 
uate, "to adapt their manners and, to some 
extent, their life to the approbation of those in 
higher classes, whom they look upon as likely 
to be influential in their behalf, instead of being 
governed by elevated principles and a high sense 
of honor." Undoubtedly this repression has 
some good effects, as urged by Baird, who brings 
forward the salutary discipline often exercised 
by the societies; but there are some good 
things pertaining to every tyranny. Public 
sentiment, too, among a community includ- 
ing so many men of upright character as a 
college does, considerably limits this evil, many 
men being driven to take the opposite extreme 
of independent conduct, as well explained in 
the leading article of the Yale Literary Magazme 
for May, 1882 : yet few communities are capable 
of a more universal and servile subjection of 
opinion, for the time being, than a college com- 
munity. With all its limitations, there are few 
men whom this influence does not warp some- 
what from the true; and it is still enough to fill 
the soul with righteous hatred of all such dom- 
ination over human freedom. 



58 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

The societies embitter factions. Parties, in- 
deed, will always exist; and Baird draws a pic- 
ture of a scene in one of the old literary socie- 
ties, with the constitution flying out of the 
window and the chairman after it. No doubt 
there might be occasional bad feeling under any 
system ; but it could come out in ways far health- 
ier and better for the students than with the 
suppressed bitterness and jealousy incident to 
the secret system. It is the diiference between 
bad blood breaking out on the surface, or re- 
maining in the system ; of which the former 
may look worse, but is far better for health and 
soundness. Says a college President,^ ''Their 
general effect is to sow dissensions and produce 
factions in a degree in which they were never 
known to exist here before, and so as to render 
the elections of the several societies scenes of 
most unhappy division." Another President, ^ 
*' They break the college into parties, produce 
jealousies, contentions and a difficulty of pro- 
moting any object of general utility among the 
students." President Robinson, of Brown, 
" They foster a spirit of clannishness and lead 
to the formation of cliques in the classes, inter- 
fering with the class feeling, and sometimes 
destroying utterly the esprit de corps which it is 
so desirable for every class to cherish."^ This 
last would not be true to the same degree under 
a class system ; yet a graduate says that in 
Yale they " stimulate petty intrigue," and "give 

^ Hitchcock's Reminiscences of Amherst, p. 323. 
^ Do., do., p. 325. 

^ Report 10 the Corporation of Brown University, June, 
1876 ; p. 16. 



I 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 59 

opportunity for slights in the bestowment of 
Students' honors, which embitter the remain- 
der of college life, and, in some cases, of after 
years." "Prominent among" the evils with 
which " such societies may be, and sometimes 
are, attended," President Porter mentions "the 
fostering of an intriguing and political spirit, 
which is incongruous with the general tenden- 
cies of college life toward justice and generosity ; 
and the division of the community and the classes 
into hostile factions."^ "I am confident," says 
President Hitchcock, however, "that the evils 
feared from them have much diminished."^ In 
Yale, also, many of them have disappeared with 
the giving up of the Wooden Spoon, and of coali- 
tions between the Junior societies, with the abo- 
lition of the societies of the two lower classes 
and the giving up of class elections for the bi- 
w^eekly papers; though the method of appoint- 
ment by the editors gives the latter so much 
power as to involve some of the same objections. 
Of late years, therefore, there has been a consid- 
erable progress in Yale toward a more whole- 
some and generous public life ; yet a straw occa- 
sionally shows that there is a wind still blowing 
the wrong way. The Senior neutrals sometimes 
hold a private caucus before the election of class 
committees, in which the ticket is so arranged 
as to exclude every society man ; a singular 
proceeding, when it is remembered that the 
society men are presumably the best and most 
popular men of the class. I need not dwell on 
the undercurrent of feeling shown by such a fact. 

^ American Colleges, p. 195. 

2 Reminiscences of Amherst College, p. 325. 



6o THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

When allowed at Harvard, the societies created 
such feeling that in one instance the Seniors 
could not or would not arrange for their class 
day, and the Faculty were obliged to get up 
some sort of a programme for the occasion. It 
may be true, as Baird says, that the societies do 
not introduce politics ; but they do introduce 
into them unnecessary elements of bitterness. 

As to direct outward influence on undergrad- 
uate interests, matters are probably about evenly 
balanced. Some years athletics have doubtless 
suffered seriously, either from society men's pre- 
suming on their position to break training rules, 
or from their indifference to college interests 
after themselves attaining the coveted honors, 
or from favoritism in management, or from a 
general lack of patriotism. It is also said, and 
probably with some truth, that the society influ- 
ence is unfair with respect to the choice of men 
for various positions, as on the papers or the 
Glee Club. But these evils are much checked 
by honor and the pressure of public sentiment ; 
and also largely balanced by the zeal aroused 
by society ambition and by society rivalries. 

The real mischief, however, lies deeper; in 
the principles and methods, and their influence, 
which is against that public discussion of men 
and measures which is so vital to civil liberty. 
This, in case of a political society, has been al- 
ready explained. Under the class system, it is 
felt in reference to the system itself. Its sup- 
porters will have no discussion of it; hence its 
real nature and tendencies are not understood. 
Its effects are not known. Whole classes may 
and often do feel themselves bitterly galled by 
their subjection to it; but no man dares to open 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 6l 

his mouth. It is also specially felt in reference 
to public men and measures. It frequently 
shields those who hold public offices from mer- 
ited criticism. It prevents large numbers of 
men from speaking and voting independently 
on public measures. The Junior class, particu- 
larly, feels itself almost literally bound hand and 
foot, so far as any public action is concerned. 
The freedom of university meetings is very much 
impaired by this influence. Devotion to the so- 
ciety also is likely to overshadow regard for the 
college, so that men do not feel a hearty devotion 
to college interests, as a quotation from a college 
President has already suggested. College hon- 
ors come to be valued not as tokens and rewards 
of college patriotism, but as stepping-stones or 
trophies for a society. The tendency is for men 
to work in athletics not for the honor of the col- 
lege, but to get into a society; which puts the 
thing on a false foundation, for no one would 
admit for a moment that such was his real mo- 
tive. So, whether organizations are managed 
in the society interest or not, it is very often be- 
lieved that they are, which, as already explained, 
is fatal to confidence and harmony. All secret 
societies tend very strongly to favoritism ; and 
^' how utterly unjust and subversive of the best 
interests of the State " this is, it needs not those 
letters of Washington to which Lieber refers to 
show.^ 

Societies are an annoying and hampering in- 
fluence in the relations between the general body 
of students and the Faculty. The society con- 
nections of instructors lie directly athwart the 

^ Political Ethics, 2d edition, Vol. II, p. 29., 



62 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

path of that progress whereby the students of 
the larger colleges are outgrowing the school- 
boy notion of what these relations must be, and 
coming nearer to the true relation of pupil and 
master. To the imagination of the undergradu- 
ate aspirant, these instructors seem to be invested 
with all of the mysterious society power, and 
consequently capable of about as much sym- 
pathy and enthusiasm as an iceberg. He 
often regards them as working secretly to ad- 
vance their own organization. Doubtless the 
student sometimes gains from the society am- 
bition inspired by these relations ; but he gen- 
erally loses more in other ways than he gains 
here. Even when further experience modifies 
his views of the matter, he cannot help feeling 
that such officers are identified with extra-col- 
lege interests, or that they are united with a 
particular part of the students in a way which 
threatens injustice and certainly involves loss of 
sympathy for the rest. What has been said 
about the society influence on college patriot- 
ism and about favoritism may sometimes apply 
here with regard to marks and college honors; 
but probably much less often, to men of such 
character as college officers usually are, than 
undergraduates suppose. The effects above 
mentioned are largely due to the secrecy. 

It may be noticed that there is a question as 
to whether society considerations should enter 
into the choice of college officers, on either side. 
This would depend on the importance attached 
to the society influence, for good or evil. Clearly 
no society, as such, ought to exert an atom of 
political influence for or against a candidate. 
Officers who had never joined the societies 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM, 6;^ 

would be free to act more impartially, but they 
could not understand as well the nature of the in- 
stitutions with which they had to deal. Society 
men, on the other hand, could hardly avoid be- 
ing influenced somewhat by considerations of 
party fealty ; and, while maintaining such re- 
serve as at Yale, they would not be in a favora- 
ble position to understand or measure the so- 
ciety influence on the great body of students and 
graduates, or to deal adequately with questions 
of reform. The general principle would seem 
to be that society considerations ought to be 
kept very subordinate, if admitted at all ; but 
there are reasons which might make them worthy 
of serious attention. 

Very important is the bearing of this question 
on the college patriotism of graduates, the feel- 
ing which men have for Alma Mater. Societies 
may bind men's affections, but these tend to cen- 
ter in the society, not in the college. The liter- 
ary societies sometimes trenched on the college 
province, but not as the secret societies do. The 
latter may bring men back to Commencement, 
but when there the tendency is to exalt the so- 
ciety much above its true place, as compared 
with the college. Graduates are also led to 
give their money in ways less profitable than 
might be. Can any man doubt that if the thou- 
sands of dollars which have gone into the so- 
ciety halls of this institution had gone into the 
buildings of literary societies, for instance, they 
would have done far more good 1 A graduate 
says : There is " hardly a doubt but that the 
buildings have, in every instance, been erected 
by the contributions of graduates of the college 
who were members of the societies while they 



64 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

were here. There are four such buildings. One 
of them is said to have cost more than ^40,000." 
Proportionate expenditures for the others would 
raise the total to at least a hundred thousand 
dollars. Suppose it to be admitted, for the mo- 
ment, that the advantages of secret societies do 
on the whole outweigh their evils; yet is it not 
clear that the latter, on the whole, are so serious 
as to make the return for the outlay a very small 
one, so far as the undergraduates are concerned } 
If, then, it be further admitted that the graduates 
are to some extent building club-houses for 
themselves, which helps the case for the so- 
cieties in this respect : even then does it not 
appear that the same sums could be given to the 
college for much better purposes.^ But if, still 
holding the latter supposition, we take what is 
probably the true view, that the evils do out- 
weigh the advantages, and the principle is a 
wrong one, such investments must appear to be 
very seriously mistaken indeed. 

Neutrals, on the other hand, must be much 
alienated, particularly under such a class system 
as that in Yale. There is something terrible 
about the silent exclusion, stern and cold as 
death, and as hopeless, by which they are left 
out of what they believe the controlling powers 
of the college. A recent graduate of an Eastern 
college says of one society in his college, '^What- 
ever it may have intended to be in its origin, it 
has certainly grown into a political brotherhood 
with branches extending in many directions." 
In certain cities "the members pull together in 
every way they can ; and I might give startling 
instances of how they favor one another in 
places and ways that seem beyond their reach. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 65 

They are not many but are enough when a unit 
to control college politics. They struck in years 
ago to secure control of the Faculty and they 
have it. They might have more representatives 
there, but do not wish it, because that would be 
a concentration of power which would weaken 
the forces for other fields of operation." This 
is not quoted to endorse its statements, as true of 
the system generally or of any particular soci- 
ety, but to show how some neutrals regard the 
societies. This must weaken college patriotism. 
" I am quite certain that the mass of the students 
feel less interest in the prosperity of the Univer- 
sity than they were wont to do," writes an old 
graduate of Yale. In such matters men are very 
much influenced, often unconsciously, by their 
feelings and impressions; and among these, few 
are so deep and lasting as those caused by a 
social slight, or by being regarded or treated as 
inferior. That the secret system in college in- 
volves a systematic treatment of this kind is 
clear; though men do not realize it, because it 
happens to be the custom to inflict it on one 
side, and to put up with it on the other. This 
considerably modifies the eff'ect but it does not 
remove it. Nor must this be taken to mean that 
the alumni of Yale are not substantially loval 
to her. The subscriptions for the athletic 
grounds and the enthusiasm of the alumni asso- 
ciations would show that they are ; but it seems 
certain that this is in spite of the secret system, 
not because of it. It is said that alumni of the 
college have refused to send their sons to Yale 
because of the secret society system there domi- 



66 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

nant ; and that thousands of dollars of endow- 
ment are withheld from the college for the same 
reason. 

The unfavorable effect on college thought, al- 
ready noticed, is largely explained by these 
political influences. Thought has its roots deep 
in the political structure of society, and finds in 
freedom its native soil. The Greek and Roman 
republics, for instance, gave the world immortal 
literatures ; but the rival despotisms of the East 
produced little or nothing of value. Secret so- 
cieties cramp college thought, by taking away 
the spontaneity and inspiration of freedom. 

Nor are such influences calculated to form the 
highest public character. I believe that in most 
cases it does require a sacrifice of manliness and 
independence to join a society whose customs 
and requirements are secret. The candidate is 
committing himself to the control of those who 
have no rightful authority over him, to methods 
which he does not know, for objects which he 
does not know ; and the sacrifice is in principle 
the same, it will be seen, quite irrespectively of 
what these really are. The spirit and methods 
of a secret system, as already discussed, are 
essentially opposed to the development of a vig- 
orous and independent type of character. Says 
John Stuart Mill, ^ speaking of the ballot as a 
means of concealment, " If it be one of the par- 
amount objects of national education to foster 
courage and public spirit, it is high time now 
that people should be taught the duty of assert- 
ing and acting openly on their opinions. Dis- 
guise in all its forms is a badge of slavery." 

^ Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. IV, p. 46. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 67 

The society may be a despotism, itself under 
secret superior control. It often claims alle- 
giance for life, a despotic principle which pro- 
g-ressive government left behind long ago. Part 
of the unwritten law of Masonry, for example, 
is, " That obedience to Masonic law and author- 
ity, being voluntarily assumed, is of perpetual 
obligation, and can only be divested by the sanc- 
tion of the supreme government in Masonry."^ 
Though the voluntary nature of the contract 
lends some plausibility to this claim, yet its arti- 
ficial character and the ignorance on the part of 
the candidate of what his contract really is make 
his right of resignation as complete as in other 
organizations, or even more so. There would 
probably be an obligation, however, to keep 
the secrets, as after belonging to a party of any 
kind. 

It is one of the glories of a college to make 
its sons ready to enter on the high duties and 
honors of public life. In this training, one 
great element is the imparting of a generous 
public spirit. But in this the influence of the 
societies is not a help, but a hindrance. ** They 
lead,"^ says President Robinson, of Brown, "in 
the management of class affairs, to habits of in- 
trigue and to the practice of the low^ arts of the 
politician. Combinations and bargains are often 
made to secure or defeat the election of candi- 
dates for parts in the exercises of class day, at 
the end of the college course, which are wholly 
inconsistent with the disingenuousness of youth 

^ American Pamphlets, Yale Library, Vol. 3, Constitu- 
tion of Grand Lodge of New York, p. 21. 
^ Report as above, p. 16. 



6S THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

and scholars.'* If the public honors of gradu- 
ates, however, are due to their knowledge of 
politicians' arts acquired under the pressure of 
this system, they are not honorable, either to 
them or to the college. These considerations 
do not now have as much force in Yale as they 
once did, probably ; but apart from particular 
manifestations of it, the general truth remains 
that the secret society is at variance with true 
public spirit. The tendency of a secret system 
is to rear up a generation of politicians, not of 
statesmen. 

Political secret societies, therefore, are open 
to grave objections; and, if not political, many 
of these still hold. They are still aristocracies, 
and their public influence has man}' hurtful ele- 
ments, both among students and graduates. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MORAL VALUE. 
Love Virtue, she alone is free. — Milton. 

Moral obligation is based in the nature of God, 
and all moral questions may therefore be in- 
cluded under the general head of religion. Yet 
morality may be considered independently of its 
religious ground ; and the influence of a system 
on certain principles is to some extent a distinct 
question from its influence on the relation to 
God in which they are based, and still more dis- 
tinct from its influence on the institution which 
maintains them, in this case the church of Christ. 
Some considerations, therefore, may properly 
be given as to the general moral influence of the 
societies. 

The societies do some good in developing 
those qualities which make men capable of suc- 
cessful organized effort. Their requirements 
train men to the invaluable habit of faithfulness ; 
and the maintenance of their secrecy develops 
fidelity and trustworthiness. They also teach 
men how to unite and live with their fellows in 
social relations, and how to apply their united 
energies in continued effort. All of this is val- 
uable ;* but the greater part of it is incidental to 
any organization, and can be learned as well 
from membership of a base ball nine, or any 
other live association. 

The societies may establish and maintain a 
certain standard of honor. Says ex-Governor 
Hawley, as already quoted, " There is a great 



70 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

positive value in the cordial, mutual pledges,, 
of confidence, assistance, trust, encouragement, 
equality, fidelity, and honor." ^ This value may 
be in cultivating the sense of honor, which is a 
binding force in society, and, if rightly defined 
as "a fine sense of justice," is most worthy of 
cultivation. An instinctive aversion to any- 
thing really dishonorable is one element of true 
character. But the law of honor has an almost 
invariable tendency to become simply a law of 
custom, so that when the code prescribes a duel, 
the man of honor will always fight. In his lect- 
ures to the Yale Seniors, President Porter says,^ 
" The law of honor may be in conflict with the 
law of duty and the law of God." The immi- 
nent danger in cultivating this is that it may 
come to overshadow the great truths by which 
men should live. ''ThQ law of honor ^'' says Dr. 
Paley, quoted by President Dwight,^ " is a sys- 
tem of rules, constructed by people of fashion, 
and calculated to facilitate their intercourse 
with one another, and for no other purpose. 
Consequently it forbids nothing, but what tends 
to incommode this intercourse. Accordingly, it 
allows profaneness and impiety in every form." 
The true law of life is not the law of honor nor 
even the law of duty alone, but the Christian 
law of love, which at once transcends and in-- 
eludes them both. Lieber's remark has special 
force here: "No moral phenomenon is more 
common than that the more compact an associa- 
tion becomes, the more its members are apt, be 
it by the common esprit de corps or by an errone- 

^ Psi Upsilon Catalogue, p. xi. 
2 I quote from niemor}^ 
^ Sermons, Vol. I, p. 424. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 7 1 

ous feeling of honor, to value the interest of the 
association higher than any other, and some- 
times, as has but too frequently happened, to 
end in adopting a moral code or standard of 
their own, to be judged of only by the promotion 
of the interests of that association." ^ 

Good is sometimes done, particularly in 
the colleges, through the influence of nien of 
strong moral character over their fellows in a 
society ; but, as a general thing, the good men 
are hurt more than the bad men are helped. 
This point will be further considered in another 
connection. 

It is claimed that the fraternity watches over 
and reclaims from wrong-doing its weaker mem- 
bers, particularly in the colleges. Without 
doubt, some good is done in this way ; but, after 
deducting the amount due to other relations, 
particularly the close bonds of college life, the 
gain due to the fraternity would probably not 
be very large. Then, too, the assistance is lim- 
ited by artificial society lines, which operate to 
withdraw it from some who would otherwise re- 
ceive it. 

One of the great arguments put forth by those 
who defend the societies is the benevolence 
which they practice, to which some organiza- 
tions devote large sums of money. Two things 
are to be said here : In the first place, it is a 
partial benevolence. It limits its kindness to 
members of its own clan, and pays no heed to 
others. It is true that society teaching often in- 
culcates universal benevolence; but these admo- 
nitions are practically nullified by the exclusive 

^ Political Ethics, 2d edition, Vol. II, p. 197. 



72 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

spirit of most orders, so far as the society influ- 
ence is concerned, and they do not result in ex- 
tending to uninitiated persons, or to their fami- 
lies, those cash payments which constitute the 
claim to benevolence. Such benevolence would 
have left the man who fell among thieves to die 
by the roadside, unless he also had been a Sa- 
maritan. It is exactly that kind of benevolence 
spoken of in the Sermon on the Mount, for 
which our Lord expressly substitutes a larger 
and more unselfish benevolence. It is true that 
there are natural ties which to some extent di- 
rect all benevolence ; but secret societies per- 
vert this truth, as they do so many others. The 
trouble is that they institute an artificial benev- 
olence which has no legitimate place, and con- 
sequently infringes either on the natural ties, or 
on the claims arising from the universal broth- 
erhood of man. For instance, a stranger is hurt 
on the street; men help him a little, perhaps, 
until he makes some sign, when the members of 
his society instantly are ready to give him all 
possible relief; which last is very well, but it 
is hard to see why they should wait for the sign. 
Secondly, this benevolence is not properly be- 
nevolence at all. It cannot be called benevo- 
lence when men help one another because they 
expect to be helped in return. The real princi- 
ple is not benevolence, but mutual insurance. 
It may be all right to institute mutual insurance, 
but it is not benevolence. This is clearly shown 
by the fact that members of these societies gen- 
erally forfeit their claims to assistance by failing 
to meet their dues, the investments of years be- 
ing sometimes wholly lost in this way. Some 
real benevolence there is, no doubt, incideatally, 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 73 

but it cannot be claimed on this ground that the 
associations are essentially benevolent, any more 
than a railroad corporation is because it occa- 
sionally helps a poor employe. The Supreme 
Court of Maine, says a quotation from the Bos- 
ton Journal^ has declared that "a Masonic lodge 
is not a charitable or benevolent institution, and 
has decided that its real and personal estate is 
subject to taxation like other property." 

Viewed as a plan of insurance, even, this can 
hardly be called a good economical system. In 
1871, a revenue of $3,000,000 was claimed by one 
association, and the sum spent for relief was 
$800,000. A report of the Grand Lodge of New 
York for 1881 gives total receipts, $83,556.55 ; 
charity, $405. The Grand Lodge of Massachu- 
setts reports for last year, total receipts $107,- 
246.03; for charity and funeral expenses, $1,- 
563.79. To be sure, it may be said that the bal- 
ance is expended for other good objects ; but 
these have been separately discussed, and, at all 
events, must be balanced against a considerable 
expenditure, in addition to the objections else- 
where considered. It is probable, however, that 
college societies are not often mutual insurance 
companies; financially, at least, though they 
may perhaps be called such in other spheres. 

Some of the principal moral advantages of 
the societies have now been considered. On 
these might possibly be based some claim to a 
good moral influence, if the society theory were 
not involved in such grave difficulties by its 
fundamental principle of secrecy. 

This is a principle not at all calculated to pro- 
mote either morality or religion. Though often 
perfectly innocent, it keeps such bad company 



74 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

that it must always be challenged ; above all, 
when it is made systematic and perpetual. Se- 
crecy may not always be wrong, but wrong-do- 
ing always tries to be secret. A secret system 
does not develop the frankness and openness 
which are among the best qualities of character. 
Any one who compares the free openness of the 
Anglo-Saxon race with the stealthy nature of 
some other peoples will see why ex-President 
Woolsey declares secrecy "averse to the Eng- 
lish character." College secret societies, says 
Dr. Howard Crosby, "are pretenses, and thus at 
war with truth, candor and manliness. How- 
ever harmless in their actual operations or un- 
dertakings, however well composed in their 
membership, however pure their meetings may 
be, the fact of secrecy is insidiously w^eakening 
the foundations of frank truthfulness in the 
youthful mind," ^ Lieber gives the political 
objections already quoted, as being " in addi- 
tion to their preventing the growth and devel- 
opment of manly character, and promoting van- 
ity." ^ John Stuart Mill says, " The moral sen- 
timent of mankind in all periods of tolerably en- 
lightened morality, has condemned concealment 
unless when required by some overpowering 
motive."^ Single texts of Scripture are to be 
quoted with care as to the context, but the fol- 
lowing seems to be pertinent : " Woe unto them 
that seek deep to hide their counsel from the 
Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they 

^ College Secret Societies, published by Ezra A. Cook, 
Chicago ; p. 31. 

■' Civil Liberty, p. 135. 

2 Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. IV, p. 46. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 75 

say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?'** 
Our Lord also seems to state a general principle 
in this passage,'* ^' Men loved darkness rather 
than light, because their deeds were evil. For 
every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
Cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be re- 
proved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the 
light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that 
they are wrought in God." A special objection 
to secrecy is that it gives opportunity for im- 
moralities. The more upright members of a 
secret association are often overborne by the 
others, while the pledges to secrecy and the sup- 
posed demands of honor prevent them from 
using means to purify the association, or taking 
the public action which would remedy mat- 
ters. Dr. Crosby says,^ '' I do not speak ignor- 
antly, but from a personal experience. Thirty 
years ago I was a member of a college secret so- 
ciety, and, while I had upright fellow members, 
and we encouraged literary culture, I found the 
association was chiefly a temptation to vice. 
The promise of secrecy prevented all disclosure 
to parents, and the seclusion was thus perfect. 
We met in a back room of a hotel, liquor was 
brought from the bar-room for the company, 
and, as in all such styles of association, the con- 
versation gravitated to the obscene and the sens- 
ual. At times the scene became painfully dem- 
onstrative. I do not charge all or any of our 
college secret societies with such excesses at this 
day. Thirty years may have wrought a change. 

1 Isaiah XXIX : 15. 

2 John III : 19-21. 

^ College Secret Societies, as above ; p. 32. 



76 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

The very society to which I belonged, I have 
reason to believe, at this time is perfectly free 
from these stains. But still they all offer a re- 
markable opportunity for sins, in which public- 
ity would not allow their members to indulge 
for a moment." 

Many of these organizations are said to teach 
morality. Apart from religion, as already ob- 
served, this may have no small value ; but it is 
then off its true ground. It has lost the moral 
dynamic, the underlying divine personality 
which makes it a power, and so fails of its due 
influence among men. Even if heeded, it often 
becomes mere expediency, and so cannot be 
compared with that unselfish morality which is 
based on religion. The relation of the societies 
to Christian morality, as such, may properly 
be considered under their relation to the church. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RELATIONS TO THE CHURCH. 

I love thy church, O God ! 

Her walls before thee stand, 
Dear as the apple of thine eye, 

And graven on thy hand. 

— President D wight. 

The church is the institution divinely ordained 
for establishing the kingdom of God in the hearts 
of men. It is in relation to this kingdom that 
morality has its true meaning and value; and 
the most important question connected with the 
societies is their relation to the spiritual church 
of God, and to the visible church which is its 
outward expression. 

Although the church is the true teacher of 
morality, yet the societies might supplement her 
efforts by their labors in teaching morality, as 
many other institutions do practically, if not 
purposely ; but as a matter of fact their secret 
and exclusive character unfits them for any such 
office, while they tend to substitute a lower and 
partial morality, in which the human element 
predominates, for that higher law which has di- 
vine authority; thus taking the place of the 
church. 

The trouble here is much more serious when 
these organizations are viewed as religious, 
which many of them in some degree are. This 
is advanced as an argument in favor of some 
orders; but it actually is an argument against 
them, for it leads men to put them in place of 



78 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

the church. In connection with city evangelistic 
work, a frequent experience of the author has 
been to have his invitation to meeting met with 
the reply, *^I go to the lodge," or, '' My husband 
belongs to two societies," as if that were quite 
sufficient. Now these societies can be of little 
real value as substitutes for the church. Includ- 
ing so many unconverted men, and men with 
every sort of belief, their general religious exer- 
cises must be of a very formal and elementary 
character; and though more special meetings 
are sometimes held, as prayer-meetings in the 
chapter houses in colleges, this is probably 
very exceptional. All church members, it is 
true, are not very devout ; but probably few 
evangelical churches compare with the societies 
as to the heterogeneous religious character of 
their membership. The latter therefore do harm 
to the church, by putting in its place institutions 
which have little or no real religion. Partly 
for this reason, partly because of the exclusive 
character of the societies, the use of the Scrip- 
tures and of religious ceremonies which they 
often make is impious. What is said of God's 
people they often apply to members of their 
own fraternity, leaving out the rest of us in a 
way which makes us doubtful whether to be in- 
dignant or amused. Speaking of a deceased 
member, they will allude to the '^ Great Com- 
mander " w^ho has called him to " a celestial 
convocation of the infinite chapter," as though 
the Almighty were the head of their order, and 
heaven one of its chapters. The feelings of dis- 
gust which such sentiments inspire in other 
Christians are chargeable to the system, because 
they spring from its exclusive spirit. College 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 79 

societies, however, are probably religious only 
to a limited degree, if at all. 

The influence of secret societies upon inde- 
pendence of character has already been noticed. 
The importance of this quality in the constitu- 
tiron of the moral character can hardly be over- 
estimated. It is the keystone of the arch. It 
means loyalty to God and right rather than sub- 
servience to the opinions and customs of men, 
when these conflict. As such, it is one statement 
of the great comprehensive principle of obed- 
ience to God, which is the foundation of all 
Christian character. A large college teaches 
men how to live in communities with due regard 
to the opinions and rights of others ; but it must 
also teach that independence which is grand and 
manly because it is founded in principle and its 
trust is in God. 

The spirit of a secret society is not the cath- 
olic spirit of Christianity. It belongs to the old 
partial and exclusive systems of heathenism, a 
great number of which were themselves secret 
societies, like the Egyptian religion, the myster- 
ies of Eleusis, and many parts of the Roman 
religion. So Lieber speaks of ''the importaiit 
fact that mysterious and secret societies belong 
to paganism rather than to Christianity." ^ 
When the vail of the temple was rent in twain, 
it signified that thenceforward the way into the 
holiest was freely open to all men everywhere, 
and that every man was himself to be a king 
and a priest unto God. This is the principle 
which is the foundation of modern civil and re- 
ligious liberty. It was the spring of the Refor- 

^ Civil Liberty, p. 135. 



8o THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

mation ; it is the inspiration of republicanism. 
How essentially the secret society spirit is at 
war with these principles may be seen from its 
very nature, perhaps, but especially from the 
spirit of such religious sentiments as have been 
put forth by some of the fraternities. Compare 
their narrow and exclusive spirit and purpose 
with the free and universal invitations of the 
Gospel, with the spirit of the church of Christ, 
that great institution whose doors stand open 
day and night, and whose welcome is as wide as 
humanity. 

The principal distinction between men in this 
world is that between the converted and the un- 
converted, those who are Christians and those 
who are not. It is imperative on all Christians 
to recognize this great truth and act accordingly. 
If the salt has lost its savor, it is worthless. 
The world respects a decided Christianity, and 
is won to conversion by it much sooner than by 
that which shows a compromising spirit. The 
world is at war with God, and in such a contest 
compromise is impossible. It can never be 
lifted up to Christianity by taking the latter 
down to its moral level, and the church of Christ 
will never be the power which it might be, in 
college or anywhere else, until it stands uncom- 
promisingly, without bigotry, indeed, but firmly, 
on the truth. Phillips Brooks gives the prin- 
ciple, though he probably would not make this 
application of it : ^' Fashionable society is neither 
intellectual nor spiritual ; * any man or woman 
must break its chains and refuse to be its slave, 
or it is impossible to come to the best culture 
either of mind or soul.*'^ A man must "put 

^ The Candle of the Lord and other Sermons, p. 213. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 8 1 

aside the lower that the higher may come in to 
him." At a Christian convention in Chicago, 
Mr. Moody said, " Separate yourselves from the 
world and the things of the world. God wants 
his people separate. They will have ten thou- 
sand times more influence when separate from 
the world. It is separation, not compromise 
that we want. The cry ought to be raised all 
over this Western country, ' Sepaj^ation^ separa- 
tion !' But people will say. If you take that 
stand — lift yourselves so high — a great many of 
these men will leave the church. Never mind. 
If we should lose some church members we 
shall gain many that are better men. Hundreds 
will come in and take their places. There should 
be no compromise." Dr. T. L. Cuyler said, 
in a late issue of the New York Independcfit^ ^ 
" Christ's followers never will save the world by 
secularizing itself or surrendering its strict 
principles of loyalty to whatever is right and 
pure and holy. Conformity to the world will 
never convert it. ' Come out and be ye sepa- 
rate,' saith the Lord, "and touch no unclean 
thing.' * * Conformity to the world is weakening 
the backbone of the Church, and thus far dimin- 
ishing its power to lift the world up toward 
God. 'If thou wouldst pull a man out of a pit,' 
said quaint old Philip Henry, * thou must have 
a good foothold, or else he will pull thee in.' " 

Paul gives the same principle, in a different 
connection, *' Be ye not unequally yoked to- 
gether with unbelievers; for what fellowship 
hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and 
what communion hath light with darkness ? 

^ New York Independent, June i, 1882. 

6 



82 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or 
what part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? 
^ ^ Wherefore come out from among them, 
and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch 
not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, 
and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall 
be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord 
Almighty." ^ And our Lord says of his servants, 
^' They are not of the world, even as I am not 
of the world." ^ 

This truth has particular application on 
•doubtful questions. It is the little foxes that 
destroy the vines, and the loss of character 
often begins in giving the inclination the benefit 
of the doubt. Mr. Moody's rule is the precise 
opposite, " Give your conscience the benefit of 
the doubt; even if you are mistaken, the Lord 
will bless you just the same." With the modi- 
fication that the doubt must be a reasonable and 
well-established one, and not a mere whim or 
eccentricity, I believe this to be the true rule, 
w^hose adoption would save many a Christian 
from serious or fatal embarrassment, and make 
him a power for good. 

What is meant by this teaching, however, 
must not be confounded with an ascetic or 
monastic view of life. It is to be noticed that 
nearly all those quoted above are men of a vig- 
orous, aggressive type of piety, men of hearty 
whole-souled life, men, not of this world, who 
yet take a strong hold of things in it. It has 
been ordained that Christians are to be mingled 
with those who are not Christians in many of 

^ II Corinthians, VI : 14-18. 
2 John XVII: 16. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. S^ 

the relations and concerns of life. Such asso- 
ciation develops Christian character, by trial of 
it, and is also the means whereby the leaven of 
Christianity is to work in society. The only 
question is where such association involves com- 
promise. Whether these principles exclude 
Christians from secret societies or not, every 
man must decide for himself, in his right of pri- 
vate judgment. My own opinion is that in most 
cases they do. The objection here to a secret 
society is that it involves a man as organizations 
for a definite object, like societies for political 
reform, for instance, do not. It somehow lays 
claim to the whole personality, and creates too 
close intimacies between persons of opposite 
moral or religious character. In college socie- 
ties this does some good, but more harm ; 
though some men gain, others lose, and often 
much more than enough to balance the first. 
This is one great false principle in the society 
theory; the leading religious and moral men in 
associations doubtful or more than doubtful, 
closely bound up with men whose moral char- 
acter is simply poison. Incalculable mischief 
is often worked thus in college; the religious 
leaders are so embarrassed that they do not lead, 
and so no progress is made against the common 
enemy, or there is a retreat. A college Presi- 
dent says, '^ In some few instances, which have 
come to our knowledge, a restraining moral in- 
fluence has been exerted over young men who 
were inclined to dissipation by their more serious 
or religious associates in these societies, but we 
fear that the effect is oftener to lower the tone of 
religious character in the pious young men be- 



84 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

longing to them."^ Another President, "The 
literary and religious effect bad ; the moral effect 
equivocal — on good boys rather injurious — on 
bad boys rather beneficial. Membership lowers 
the tone of piety generally." A third, " The 
alienation of feeling and want of cordiality thus 
created are not favorable to a right moral and 
religious state." 

There is a certain something about the society 
allegiance which seems to conflict with loyalty 
to the church ; and the Catholic church shows a 
true instinct on this point, as she does on many 
others, by forbidding her members to join any 
secret order without the church. Why this 
conflict should exist is not always clear; cer- 
tainly there is nothing of the kind about mem- 
bership of a literary society, for instance. One 
reason for this may be found in the peculiar 
claim of the society to the whole personality of 
its members. The wearing of a badge signifies 
much more that membership of any other organ- 
ization does. The society makes the same com- 
prehensive claim which the church or the state 
or the family does; a claim which has no such 
foundation in nature, and therefore operates to 
supplant the others. 

Another reason for this may be found in the 
usual oaths, invoking the Deity to sanction obli- 
gations which are extra-judicial, and which unite 
Christians with unconverted men in a bond 
which is at least of doubtful character. Special 
objections also grow out of this, because the 
candidate may often be sworn to things which 
he does not approve of; or to vows of fraternal 
feeling which he cannot or will not try to keep. 

^ Hitchcock's Reminiscences of Amherst College, p. 323. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 85 

The societies often interfere with the practical 
workings of the church. They divide the mem- 
bers, in precisely the same way, and for the same 
reasons, as they divide the citizens of a state. 
A case once came to the writer's knowledge, of 
a man's refusing to join a certain church because 
he believed it to be run by a secret society. 
Church conferences are also sometimes believed 
to be controlled in the same way, and ministers 
are supposed to get or lose their positions be- 
cause of society affiliations or antagonisms. 
How harmful all this is, not to the uniformity, 
which is not required, but to the real unity of 
the church, which is, needs no explanation. 
Here again, though political dissensions often 
work like serious results, yet with the societies 
there is danger of specially objectionable fea- 
tures of permanent jealousy and suspicion. 

Reasons for this will perhaps appear more 
clearly if the formation of a secret society be 
imagined. Suppose the members of a church 
living in harmony and mutual affection, and 
then imagine the formation of a secret society 
among them. Is it not clear that such a change 
would be hostile to the spirit which had hitherto 
united them .^ Much forbearance would doubt- 
less be exercised; but it is not altogether prob- 
able that feelings of bitterness and jealousy 
would arise 1 Of course few churches have 
reached a very perfect state of harmony; but in 
order to be approaching it they must keep ob- 
stacles out of the way, as far as possible. Some 
approach to it is almost necessary for any vig- 
orous Christian life and work. 

With college class societies, the divisive in- 
fluence is especially felt. It operates very 



S6 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

Strongly to prevent that union among the Chris-- 
tian men in the different classes which is neces-^ 
sary for the best progress in Christian life and 
work. The reasons of this separation and its 
actual workings are the same in this sphere as 
they are in social and other relations already 
considered. 

The course of the discussion thus far has 
shown that the secrecy and exclusiveness of 
the societies are serious objections to them, 
on social grounds, while the friendly and 
social relations of college life do not require 
them ; that they destroy the college literary so- 
cieties, taking only a small part of their place, 
and do not, on the whole, exert a wholesome 
intellectual influence; that their political influ- 
ence is pernicious; that they are essentially 
aristocracies ; and that they are generally hurt- 
ful both to morality and to the church. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OPINIONS. 
In multitude of counselors there is safety. — Solomon, 

There is a considerable body of opinion which 
supports the positions taken in this discussion. 
Quotations may first be given from statesmen, 
or leading public men : 

Washington is held up as belonging to a so- 
ciety, but with no great justice. Gov. Ritner 
quotes from Rev. Ezra Styles, D.D. :^ 

When Jonathan Trumbull was aid de camp to General 
Washington, he *' asked him if he would advise him to be- 
come a Mason. General Washington replied that Masonry 
was a benevolent institution, which might be employed for 
the best or worst of purposes ; but that for the most part it 
was merely child's play, and that he could not give him 
any advice on the subject." 

In a letter to Rev. Mr. Snyder, Washington corrects " an 
error you have run into, of my presiding over the English 
lodges in this country. The fact is, I preside over none, 
nor have I been in one more than once or twice within the 
last thirty years." ^ 

Before his death he warned the country to beware of all 
secret societies. 

John Hancock : 
•* I am opposed to all secret associations." 

Samuel Adams : 

** I am decidedly opposed to all secret societies what- 
ever." 

1 Philadelphian, July 23, 1830. 

^ Letter dated Sept. 25, 1798, in Finney's Freemasonry, 
p. 222. 



88 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

John Quincy Adams : 

** I am prepared to complete the demonstration before 
God and man, that the Masonic oaths, obligations and pen- 
alties, cannot, by any possibility, be reconciled to the laws 
of morality, of Christianity, or of the land." ^ April lo, 
1833: "I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that 
the order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the 
greatest moral and political evils under which this Union 
is now laboring." 

Edward Everett : 

" All secret societies are dangerous, in proportion to the 
extent of their organization and the number of their mem- 
bers. All secret associations, particularly all such as 
resort to the aid of secret oaths, are peculiarly at war with 
the genius of a republican government." 

Judge Marshall, Chief Justice of the United 
States : 

" The institution of Masonry ought to be abandoned, as 
one capable of producing much evil, and incapable of pro- 
ducing any good, which might not be effected by safe and 
open means." ^ 

Horace Mann : 

" It seems to me that all the higher and nobler instincts 
of mankind are adverse ro such associations." 

William H. Seward : 

*' I belong: to one voluntary association of men, which has 
to do with spiritual affairs. It is the Christian Church. * 
I belong to one temporal society of men and that is the po- 
litical party. * * 

These two associations, the one spiritual and the other 
temporal, are the only voluntary associations to which I 
now belong, or ever have belonged since I became a man ; 
and unless I am bereft of reason, they are the only associa- 
tions of men to which I shall ever suffer myself to belong. 

^ Quoted from letter to Edward Livingston. 
^ Quoted from letter to Edward Everett. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 89 

Secret societies, sir? Before I would place my hand be- 
tween the hands of other men, in a secret lodge, order, 
class or council, and bending on my knee before them, 
enter into combination with them for any object, personal 
or political, good or bad, I would pray to God that that 
hand and that knee might be paralyzed, and that I might 
become an object of pity and even the mocker3^ of my fellow 
men. • 

Swear, sir ! I, a man, an American citizen, a Christian, 
swear to submit myself to the guidance and direction of 
other men, surrendering my own judgment to their judg- 
ments, and my own conscience to their keeping ! No no, sir. 
I know quite well the fallibility of my own judgment, and 
my liability to fall into error and temptation. But my life 
has been spent in breaking the bonds of the slavery of men. 
I, therefore, know too well the danger of confiding power to 
irresponsible hands, to make myself a willing slave." 

Daniel Webster, of Freemasonry : 

" I have no hesitation in saying that however unobjec- 
tionable may have been the original objects of the institu- 
tion, or however pure may be the motives and purposes of 
the individual members, and notwithstanding the many 
great and good men who have from time to time belonged 
to the order, yet, nevertheless, it is an institution which in 
my judgment is essentially wrong in the principle of its 
formation ; that from its very nature it is liable to great 
abuses ; that among the obligations which are found to be 
imposed on its members, there are such as are entirely in- 
compatible with the duty of good citizens. ^ * Under 
the influence of this conviction it is my opinion that the 
future administration of all such oaths, and the formation 
of all such obligations, should be prohibited by law." ^ 

Some more general testimonies are valuable. 
One hundred seceding Masons, at LeRoy, New 
York, during the Morgan excitement, said : 

"We are opposed to Freemasonry because we believe : 

It affords opportunities for the corrupt and designing to 

^ Letter dated Boston, Nov. 20, 1835. 



90 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

form plans against the government, and the lives and 
characters of individuals. 

It assumes titles and dignities incompatible with a re- 
publican government, and enjoins an obedience to them 
derogatory to republican principle. 

It destroys all principles of equality by bestowing its 
favors on its own members, to the exclusion of all others^ 
equally meritorious and deserving. 

It creates odious aristocracies, by its obligations to sup- 
port the interests of its members, in preference to others of 
equal qualifications." 

A report to the United States anti-Masonic 
convention, in 1830, signed by Henry Dana 
Ward, of New. York, Thaddeus Stevens, of Penn- 
sylvania, Samuel C. Loveland, of Vermont, 
Joshua Longley, of Massachusetts, and G. P. 
McCulloch, of New Jersey, said : 

" Russia, Spain, Portugal, Naples and Rome made Free- 
masonry a capital ofTense. There is no crime in the mum- 
mery to die for under the gallows ; the offense lies in the 
political use made of Freemasonry, dangerous to all govern- 
ments. The sovereigns of France, England, Prussia, 
Netherlands, Sweden and Brazil, take the fraternity under 
the royal guardianship. This is not because their majes- 
ties love the farce of the lodge-room, but they fear its polit- 
ical tendency." 

"The only countries in which Freemasonry flourishes,^ 
neither forbidden nor restrained, are the republics of North 
America. Here the grovvth is without a parallel (except in 
France, during the last years of Louis XVI.), a growth 
honorable to the freedom, but dangerous to the stability of 
our public institutions." 

Some allowance is to be made on most of the 
above testimonies, and on some following ones 
because given during the Morgan excitement. 
In 1826 William Morgan,^ of Batavia, New York^ 
suddenly disappeared. Shortly afterward there 

^ Finney's Freemasonry, Ch. II. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 9I 

was published a book, claiming to be an expo- 
sure by Morgan of the first three degrees of Ma- 
sonry, which it undoubtedly was. It was pretty 
clearly proved that Morgan had been abducted 
by Masons, carried across the State, by an ex- 
tended conspiracy, and confined in Fort Niag- 
ara. Here he disappeared, but in 1848 Henry 
L. Valance made a dying confession which has 
been quite generally believed, that he was one 
of three Masons, who took Morgan in a boat by 
night upon the river, tied him to several 
weights, and then pushed him with them over 
the side of the boat into the river. That he had 
been murdered by Masons was believed soon 
after his disappearance. This led to a tremen- 
dous national excitement. An anti-Masonic 
party was formed, which still exists, though 
very feebly, and of the fifty thousand Masons in 
the United States, forty-five thousand seceded 
from the order. The order is now, however, 
probably very large, as are some other secnet as- 
sociations. 

There is also important testimony on relig- 
ious grounds. 

The one hundred seceders of LeRoy also 
adopted the following resolution against Ma- 
sonry : 

" It substitutes the self-righteousness and ceremonies of 
Masonry for real religion and the ordinances of the Gospel. "^ 

Rev. Chas. G. Finney, the great revival 
preacher, and president of Oberlin, who had 
been a Mason, says that after his conversion : 

" I soon found that I was completely converted fro77t 
Freemasonry to Christ, and that I could have no fellowship 
with any of the proceedings of the lodge. Its oaths ap- 



92 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

peared to me to be monstrously profane and barbarous." ^ 
*' Its morality is unchristian. * Its oath-bound secrecy is 
unchristian. * * It is a virtual conspiracy against both 
Church and State." 

D. L. Moody: 

" I do not see how any Christian, most of all a Christian 
minister, can go into these secret lodges with unbelievers. 
They say they can have more influence for good, but I say 
they can have more influence for good by staying out of 
them, and then reproving their evil deeds. Abraham had 
more influence for good in Sodom than Lot had. If twen- 
t3'-five Christians go into a secret lodge with fifty who are 
not Christians, the fifty can vote anything they please, and 
the twenty-five will be partakers of their sins. They are 
tijtequally yoked with unbelievers. * * If they would 
rather leave their churches than their lodges the sooner 
they get out of the churches the better. I would rather 
have ten members who were separated from the world than 
a thousand such members. Come out from the lodge. 
Better one with God than a thousand without Him. We 
must walk with God, and if only one or two go with us it is 
all right. Do not let down the standard to suit men who 
love their secret lodges or have some darling sin they will 
not give up." - 

Twelve denominations *'are committed by vote 
of their legislative assemblies or by constitution 
to a separation from secret lodge worship." 
Among these are the Disciples (in part), who 
number nearly six hundred thousand, the United 
Presbyterians, eighty thousand, the Lutheran 
Synodical Conference, five hundred and fifty 
thousand, the Friends, about sixty thousand, the 
German Baptists, or Dunker, sixty thousand, and 
the United Brethren, one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand. The total membership of these denomi- 
nations is one million seven hundred thousand. 

^ Finney's Fremasonry, pp. 5, 262, 263. 
^ Farwell Hall, Chicago, Dec. 14, 1876. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 93 

^' Individual churches in some of these should 
be excepted, in part of them even a considerable 
portion." Besides these, the Congregational 
'' State associations of Illinois and Iowa, have 
adopted resolutions against the lodge," and 
many local churches also oppose the lodge. One 
article of the United Presbyterian Testimony, or 
creed, is: 

"We declare that all associations, whether formed for 
political or benevolent purposes, which impose upon their 
members an oath of secrecy, or an obligation to obey a code 
of unknown laws, are inconsistent with the genius and 
spirit of Christianity, and church members ought not to 
have fellowship with such associations." ^ 

The Discipline of the United Brethren still 
reads, I believe, as adopted in 1849 • 

" Freemasonry, in every sense of the word, shall be to- 
tally prohibited, and there shall be no connection with se- 
cret combinations (a secret combination is one who^e ini- 
tiatory ceremony or bond of union is a secret); and any 
member found connected with such society shall be affec- 
tionately admonished by the preacher in charge, twice or 
thrice, and if such member does not desist in a reasonable 
time, he shall be notified to appear before the tribunal to 
which he is amenable ; and if he still refuses to desist, he 
shall be expelled from the church." 

The United Brethren joined this with temper- 
ance and anti-slavery as making three great move- 
ments of moral reform ; but it is now in many 
cases a dead letter, and will probably be taken 
out of the discipline. The majority will still 
hold to their convictions, but will adopt the 
principle of the great evangelical churches that 
these questions of moral reform are chiefly for 
the individual conscience. 

^ United Presbyterianism, p. 141. 



94 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

As an expression of undergraduate opinion, 
an editorial in the Yale Courant of March 23 , 
1878, is SO able and fair as to make it worth quot- 
ing entire : 

" The recent stealing of chains from the Bones* fence, the 
breaking of their padlocks, and the confiscation of their 
supper, were expressions of a feeling not only sour but 
weak and mean. The taking of chains from the Keys' 
fence, also, was the outcrop of a temper just as small and 
pitiable. Strange that the popular attitude toward the 
Senior societies is either bitterness or idolatry ; bitterness 
if you know you cannot go, idolatry if you dream you can ; 
bitterness if you did not go, idolatry if you did. Thanks 
to the signs about college that a true neutral spirit is grow- 
ing, a neutral spirit which is not neutrality, but a fair and 
gentlemanly independence, a neutral spirit which is not 
ashamed of itself, and which does not have to go begging 
for respect. Opposition to Bones and Keys is by no means 
a sin, we have even thought it a virtue, but when such op- 
position cankers into violence and acted malice, it becomes 
as much a crime as under-class subservience and fawning. 
We have no hopes of ever seeing the downfall of the Senior 
societies, those fascinating vampires of darkness, whose 
shadows fall ominously down the stairway of the academic 
years, and awe the climbers by the majesty of — dumbness ! 
But we sincerely hope and pra)' that Yale may never see 
the time when no manly neutrals shall have minds of their 
own, and when no independent paper dares let a neutral 
say his uttermost say. Even were Bones and Keys such a 
blessing as they are claimed to be — in disguise, yet it 
would be a sorry day for the college when there should no 
longer exist in it lusty, honest neutrals, but only soreheads ; 
it would be worse, indeed, than that a nation should have 
but one political party. Bones and Keys are a curse to 
the college ; they increase the expenses of a course already 
perniciously tending to extravagance, and influence, where 
they do not handle, by creating a college atmosphere of 
more royal and stylish living ; they furnish the chief incen- 
tive to that trickery which seams under-class life through 
and through, dividing it into castes and engendering in it 
those bitter and undying alienations which to this very day 
disfigure '78 as they did '76. They cause occasional inca- 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 95 

pacity on the crew and the nine — we will not say how 
lately they have done this. They often produce unjust 
promotion to the Glee Club, and they sometimes elect ath- 
letic officers without regard to brains or business. In all 
candor we say it, we do not think they put many rewards 
upon, nor many safeguards around, temperance and moral- 
ity in college, nor do we think their example as salutary 
for sound morals as institutions of such pretensions might 
be, for it is not so many years, nay, not so many Thursday 
nights ago, that a certain well-known Senior group came 
from the hall to the campus — drunk ! Yet it is not, in the 
main, against the thirty men that we inveigh ; the present 
thirty are for the most part splendid men, including the 
very best in the class ; it is against the system that we state 
these unexaggerated but disagreeable facts of influence and 
tendency. The men are not, in the main, vicious men, only 
so far as they are supporting a vicious system. So long as 
a few men, just few enough to be unjustly representative, 
are segregated from a class and by tradition gifted with 
certain social honors supposed to be the signs of distin- 
guished though mysterious merit, just so long will there 
rise among the students a natural, though dangerous, com- 
petition for distinction, whose intensity will ever vary di- 
rectly as the narrowness of the probabilities for success. 
Yet Bones and Keys are not an unmixed evil ; to meet a 
select coterie once a week, and over a cheerful spread to 
discuss college gossip, there to chat with several Profes- 
sors who have just entered, or at the great convocations of 
autumn and commencement to meet many of the most 
scholarly, successful, or wealthy gentlemen of the land, 
reaching back to the classes of antiquity, this is certainly 
not a s\u,per se. These are the partial influences of cer- 
tain meetings on thirty men, but the influences of a system 
on a college are something disastrously different." 

The following testimony includes the words 
of many eminent graduates and educators. 

Francis Lieber : 

•' It would lead us too far from our topic were we to dis- 
cuss the important fact that mysterious and secret societies 
belong to paganism rather than to Christianity, and we con- 
clude these remarks by observing that those societies which 
may be called doubly secret, that is to say, societies which 



g6 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

not only foster certain secrets and have secret transactions, 
but the members of which are bound to deny either the ex- 
istence of the society or their membership, are schools of 
untruth ; and that parents as well as teachers, in the United 
States, would do no more than perform a solemn duty, if 
they should use every means in their power to exhibit to 
those whose welfare is entrusted to them, the despicable 
character of the thousand juvenile secret societies which 
flourish in our land, and which are the preparatory schools 
for secret political societies." ' 

George William Curtis, one of our very best 
and ablest public writers, says in Hai^pers 
Monthly for January, 1874 : 

"The spring of this triumphant political Anti-Masonic 
movement was hostility to a secret society. Many of the 
most distinguished political names of Western New York, 
including Millard Fillmore, Wm. H. Seward, Thurlow 
Weed, Francis Granger, James Wadsworth, George W. 
Patterson, were associated with it. And as the larger por- 
tion of the Whig party was merged in the Republican, the 
dominant party of to-day has a certain lineal descent from 
the feelings aroused by the abduction of Morgan from the 
jail at Canandaigua. And as his disappearance and the 
odium consequent upon it stigmatized Masonry, so that it 
lay for a long time moribund, and, although revived in later 
years, cannot hope to regain its old importance, so the 
death of young Leggett is likely to wound fatally the sys- 
tem of college secret societies. 

Every collegian knows that there is no secrec}^ whatever 
in what is called a secret society. * * Literary brother- 
hood, philosophic fraternity, intellectual emulation, these 
are the noble names b)' which the youth deceive themselves 
and allure Freshmen ; but the real business of the society 
is to keep the secret, and to get all the members possible 
from the entering class. 

■^ "^ Earnest curiosity changes into ^j/;7V ^« r^;;^j, and 
the mischief is that the secrecy and the society feeling are 
likely to take precedence of the really desirable motives in 
college. There is a hundred-fold greater zeal to obtain 
members than there is generous rivalry among the societies 

1 Civil Liberty, p. 135. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 97 

to carry of; the true college honors. And if the purpose 
be admirable, why, as Professor Wilder asks, the secrecy? 
What more can the secret society do for the intellectual or 
social training of the student than the open society? Has 
any secret society in an American college done, or can it 
do, more for the intelligent young man than the Union De^ 
bating Society at the English Cambridge University, or the 
similar club at Oxford? There Macaulay, Gladstone, the 
Austins, Charles Buller, Tooke, Ellis, and the long illus- 
trious list of noted and able Englishmen were trained, and 
in the only way that manly minds can be trained, by open, 
free, generous rivalry and collision. The member of a se- 
cret society in college is really confined, socially and intel- 
lectually, to its membership, for it is found that the secret 
gradually supplant the open societies. But that member- 
ship depends upon luck, not upon merit, while it has the 
capital disadvantage of erecting false standards of meas- 
urement so that the Mu Nu man cannot be just to the hero 
of the Zeta Eta. The secrecy is a spice that overbears the 
food. The mystic paraphernalia is a relic of the baby- 
house, which a generous youth disdains. 

There is, indeed, an agreeable sentiment in the veiled 
friendship of the secret society which every social nature 
understands. But as students are now becoming more 
truly "men" as they enter college, because of the higher 
standard of requirement, it is probable that the glory of the 
secret society is already waning, and that the allegiance of 
the older universities to the open arenas of frank and manly 
intellectual contests, involving no expense, no dissipation, 
and no perilous temptation, is returning. At least there 
will now be an urgent question among many of the best 
men in college whether it ought not to return." 

Hon. William M. Evarts, Ex-Secretary of 
State, who graduated at Yale in 1837, spoke at 
the alumni dinner of 1873. The Hartford Cour- 
ant said next day : 

'* He did good work to-day in speaking against the evil 
effects of secret societies — a subject which had been pre- 
viously well handled by Mr. Van Sanford. * * There 
were hundreds of old graduates who agreed with the 
speaker when he advocated the revival of the old societies 



98 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

and the suppression of the foolish secret clubs which have 
supplanted them." 

The Courant also said editorially : 

*' The speakers at the Yale alumni meeting yesterday- 
did well in entering their protest against the influence of 
the class secret societies in killing the two great rival de- 
bating societies, which were open to the members of all 
classes. * * Mr. Evans, who has few equals and no 
superiors as a ready thinker and talker, attributes no small 
degree of his success to the training of these societies. * * 
Of late the secret societies, confined to classes, and seldom 
mustering more than twenty at any evening session, have 
monopolized the time and attention of the students and 
liave destroyed the honored old societies. To the gradu- 
ate of a few years, there is nothing more absurd than the 
importance which the undergraduate attaches to his society 
badge and secrets. ^ * Meantime, the secret society 
fosters snobbery and tends to create division among the 
best friends. * * It would be a good thing if young men 
liad the manliness to appreciate the bad effects of these 
societies and to voluntarily repudiate them and revive the 
more honorable and more manly rivalry of the great, open, 
college debating societies." 

The Springfield Republican^ Oct. 23, 1873 ' 
In earlier times, ''Secret associations were an economi- 
cal device. * * To-day and here they have no such ex- 
cuse for their existence. There is not a moral, political or 
social purpose which secrec}^ can aid more than openness. 
^ * It is a foible that belongs to the juvenile mind and the 
juvenile state of civilization. It is the meat of petty 
rather than large minds, and we fear we must say of the 
feminine rather than of the masculine cast of thought. 
Secret societies, therefore, thrive among vealy youth in 
colleges, and among a class of ordinary people who are 
just below politics." 

President Robinson, of Brown, in his report 
to the corporation for 1876, mentions several 
objections to the societies, and closes by saying : 

" That they are, as now existing with us, a direct hin- 
drance to the best kind of work, I have no doubt." 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 99 

President Hitchcock, of Amherst, gives letters 
from nine college Presidents on this point. ^ 
The first says : 

*' Could these associations be altogether removed from 
the institutions of learning in our country, I should think 
it a result in which friends of learning, *and especially the 
officers of colleges, would have great occasion to rejoice." 

A second President : 

"As soon as the Faculty ascertained that such societies 
were in existence, they ordered the students to break off 
their connection with them, stating explicitly that they 
could not and would not be permitted." 

A third President : 

'• We are unanimously and decidedly of opinion that it 
would be desirable to have all these secret societies rooted 
out of our colleges." 

A fourth President : 

" The literary and religious effect bad; the moral effect 
equivocal. * * I have made one, nay more than one in- 
effectual attempt to rid this college of their influence. So 
far as I have seen, all direct opposition has only aggravated 
the evil ; and latterly my efforts have been directed to the 
modification and direction, rather than to the extermination 
of these societies, which I have always regarded as an evil 
— latterly as an evil inseparable from an assemblage of 
young men — perhaps of men of any age." 

A fifth President : 

" On the whole, my opinion is that they have been evil, 
and sometimes very much so. ^ * I suppose it would be 
desirable that secret societies should be rooted out of our 
colleges and from every other place. If all these paltry 
and rival associations could be at once and forever broken 
up there can be no doubt it would be a great blessing." 

^ Reminiscences of Amherst College, pp. 320-326. 



lOO THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

A sixth President : 

"There is reason to believe that some, at least, of those 
societies, have on the whole an injurious influence. * ^ 
There are altogether too many of them." 

A seventh President : 

" I am of opinion that the tendency of such societies is 
bad of necessity, that is, so long as they have the power, by 
means of secrecy, of doing mischief." 

An eighth President : 

" The only secret society * * known to exist here is 
supposed to be harmless, and its meetings are permitted to 
be held." 

A ninth President : 

"Their influence not suspected at first, but found to be 
bad. * * Nothing but evil results, or is likely to result 
from them upon members themselves as students, or as 
Christians, and no good to those who are not members. 
They are a mere plague to any college." 

President Hitchcock, however, adds : 

"We did not find it necessary to take any active meas- 
ures against these societies, and they have been suff"ered 
ever since to exist. And I am confident that the evils 
feared from them have much diminished." 

Dr. Howard Crosby, Chancellor of the Uni- 
versity of New York, under the title of ** My 
Objections to Secret Societies in Colleges,'* 
writes in the Congregationalist of 1869 : 

" The heart of man loves secrecy, because it is an ele« 
ment of power. * * Solid, studious men get this power 
in a legitimate way. * * Hidden treasures lie within 
their minds, and the world pays respect to the power that 
is implied. * * Where men cannot gain this position 
of influence in the legitimate way, either from want of ca- 
pacity, or indolence, or the necessities of youth, there is a 
very natural endeavor to gain it by trick and assumption. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. lOI 

^ * We have no hesitation in writing secret societies 
among the quackeries of this earth, a part of the great sys- 
tem by which the mud-begotten try to pass themselves off 
as Jove-born. Leave out those secret associations, whose 
concealment is for safet3', as in political crises, and a secret 
society is a deception, more or less innocent according to 
the character of its contents. 

My first objection to the secret societies of our colleges 
is founded on the above considerations. They are pre- 
tenses, and thus at war with truth, candor and manliness. 
' Omne ignotum pro magnifico' is the principle from which 
they draw their life. * * Everything that conflicts with" 
truthful openness " is a sham and will leave its mark upon 
the character. A sham is not only in itself a mean thing, 
but it blocks the way to truth. * * 

My second objection to secret societies in our colleges 
is in the opportunity given b}^ the secrecy to immoralities. 
* "^ They all offer a remarkable opportunit)^ for sins, in 
which publicity would not allow their members to indulge 
for a moment. * * 

A third objection " is that *' the confidence between parent 
and child is broken, and hence destroyed, by these secret 
societies. "^ * A free and entire communion between the 
young and their parents is both the safeguard of the young 
and the comfort of the parents. This the secret societies 
of our colleges overthrow. * * The secrecy of the col- 
lege society renders it peculiarl)^ adapted to be a rival to 
the family. * * 

These are my three main objections to secret societies. * * 
But there are other local objections that belong to the college. 

■^ * My fourth objection is, that college secret societies in- 
terfere with a faithful course of study. * "^ I always found 
the best students were those who either kept cut of the se- 
cret societies, or who entered very slightl)^ into their opera- 
tions. ^ "^ 

A fifth objection is found in the natural use of these so- 
cieties for disturbance of public order. * "^ Out of the 
darkness dark deeds grow. * "^ 

The sixth objection I have to offer is their evil influence 
upon the regular literary societies of the college, which are 
instituted as adjuncts of the curriculum. -^ -^ I believe 
that I am right in asserting that in most of our colleges the 
literary societies * * have been utterly ruined, except 
as alumni centers, by the secret societies. 



I02 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

My last objection is their expensiveness. * ^ 
I know that many excellent men, long after they leave 
college, support these societies. * * But for all that, I 
cannot but believe that the principle on which they rest is- 
pernicious, and nothing is gained by them which might not 
be gained far better by open dealing. The principle is not 
only pernicious, but childish."^ 

Reports from forty-eight schools and colleges 
in twenty states, as to college secret societies, 
were sent to Ezra A. Cook & Co., Chicago, at 
their request, about the year 1873. Of these 
only three expressed views favoring the socie- 
ties, and the letters showed "a general and deeply 
seated conviction that their nature and tendency 
is wholly evil.** 

Among the institutions which do not allow 
secret societies are many Western colleges, in- 
cluding Olivet, Beloit, Ripon and Oberlin. 
They are forbidden at West Point. In 1857 the 
Princeton societies were suppressed by the 
Faculty. The same step was also taken at the 
same time by the authorities at Harvard ; a let- 
ter has been published elsewhere which shows 
the position of a part of the Harvard Faculty 
on this, point. 

The Yale Faculty have also committed them- 
selves on this question. Some years ago a part 
of the incoming Sophomore class, which in- 
cluded in its number inany of the best men in 
the class, asked the Faculty to allow them to 
form a society for the coming year. The follow- 
ing are the conditions on which permission was 
granted ; they are given from memory, but may 
be relied on as substantially correct : 

^ College Secret Societies, published by Ezra A. Cook^ 
Chicago ; pp. 30-35- 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. I03 

1. The society shall not take the name of any previously 
existing society. 

2. The society shall hold its meetings in some (I think 
public) room on the college campus. 

3. The members of the Society shall wear no common 
badge. 

4. The society shall give out no elections to members of 
succeeding classes. 

These conditions would require a revolution 
in the society system, as it is at present. If a 
society composed largely of men of high stand- 
ing in the Sophomore class were required to 
observe such conditions, it is a plain inference 
to the judginent of the Faculty upon the secret 
society system. 

President Dwight's great name I find quoted 
against secret societies. 

President Porter's position may be inferred 
from the following passage : 

'* The love of secrecy and reserve is too strong in human 
nature, and especially in boyish nature, to be easily 
thwarted. We doubt the expediency, because we disbe- 
lieve in the possibility of destroying or preventing secret 
societies. That such societies may be, and sometimes are, 
attended with very great evils, is confessed by the great 
majority of college graduates." ^ 

Notice that the reason here suggested for al- 
lowing secret societies is that they cannot be 
prevented ; not that they ought to be encour- 
aged, or that they are a good thing. 

Ex-President Woolsey, who is as earnest in 
religion as he is great in political and social 
science, and whom our instructors are glad to 
honor as their instructor, says : 

" I don't believe in secret societies, either in college or 
out of it." 

^ American Colleges, p. 195. 



CONCLUSION. 

Some further considerations may properly be 
noticed here, which relate especially to the se- 
cret system in colleges. 

This question is particularly important in re- 
lation to personal character. It is sometimes 
said that if the societies are evil, there are greater 
evils ; which may be true, but an error in the 
higher relations of life is often the parent of 
errors which run all the way down to grossness, 
as there is an intimate though not always neces- 
sary connection between skepticism and immor- 
ality. The indifference or slothfulness of to- 
day may mean the vice of to-morrow ; or the 
loss of opportunities which might have saved 
others from ruin. This truth has special force 
of those whose character is forming. " As the 
twig is bent, the tree is inclined." " Better that " 
the child, says Ruskin, ^'should be ignorant of 
a thousand truths, than have consecrated in its 
heart a single lie." ^ Dr. Crosby says, "The Soph- 
omore wears his badge, an emblem of a sham, 
and feels a glow of pride in supporting an hy- 
pocrisy. This language is not too strong to 
those who are accustomed to trace the great evils 
of our world to their germs, and who would 
strangle the tiger when he is a manageable cub. 
These little(.^)divergencies from truth in children 
and youth become the gigantic frauds of great 
world-life by the simple action of time upon 
divergent lines of progress. There can be no 

^ Time and Tide, p. 107. 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. I05 

more important instruction inculcated on our 
young men than the necessity of truthful open- 
ness as the very warp of all virtue." ^ 

The great educational institutions are so re- 
lated to the national life as to make it impera- 
tive on them to give this question thorough 
consideration and conscientious action. They 
are the schools of the nation ; for their gradu- 
ates, generally speaking, are the leaders in the 
politics, the church, the literature of the nation, 
in all the spheres which make up the national 
life. Their sons are to shape the character and 
mold the institutions of their generation. They 
must teach language, science and philosophy ; 
but far more must they instill into their stu- 
dents undying love of true friendship, simple 
truth, clean-handed patriotism, and pure reli- 
gion. Whatever pollutions enter the stream, 
its fountain must be kept clear. 

The societies may be a step tow^ard a system 
combining more of the social with the intellec- 
tual than did the old literary societies, and bet- 
ter adapted to the varying natures of students 
than were two great literary institutions ; they 
may be, but in; order to meet the true princi- 
ples they must be so greatly changed as to make 
it very doubtful if they are. Two great literary 
societies dividing all college may or may not be 
the ideal system ; yet it seems certain that the 
true society must be neither secret nor exclu- 
sive, neither a political party nor an aristocracy, 
but must be based on the simple, natural prin- 
ciple of organization for a definite end, under 

^ College Secret Societies, published by Ezra A. Cook, 
Chicago ; pp. 31, 32. 



I06 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

which the social element will come naturally 
into place. So far as graduates are concerned, 
I need not dwell on the obvious duty which 
they have to consider whether they are support- 
ing, for their own pleasure, institutions which 
on the whole are hurtful to the students. 

If the objections to the societies are so serious, 
why do they find support among so many men 
of character and eminence.^ xOne reason lies in 
the natural conservatism of mankind. Men 
generally take things as they are, and make the 
best they can out of them, for themselves ; which 
of course is not the true principle, but it rules 
with many, and is strong with nearly all. 
Hence, if a system is once well established, it 
can exist under a heavy load of abuses for a 
long time. If Southern men had had their way, 
there would have been a great slave-holding 
empire in the South to-day; although every- 
body knows that slavery is a bad system econ- 
omically and every other way. 

Many have never really considered the mat- 
ter. They find the system existing and go on 
as their predecessors have done and their fellows 
are doing, with no thought of change ; and many 
shrink almost unconsciously from thinking of 
the matter, knowing that such thought may 
lead to convictions which they do not care to 
entertain. Even if they do consider it, many 
will conclude that the evils mean simply the 
abuse of a good thing in bad hands, which is 
common enough, unfortunately, and so cannot 
be helped. One instance came to the writer's 
knowledge, not long since, of a student's saying 
of a particular system of this kind, that he did 
not think it a good one, but saw no way of help- 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. I07 

ing matters, and so would take his election 
with the rest. Ex-Mayor Golden, who has been 
already mentioned as a man much respected, 
who had held high Masonic honors, takes up 
this point : " It may be asked how it happens 
that I should have been so long a Mason and 
not until this time expressed my disapprobation 
of the institution. ^ * I began to question 
its utility long ago. ^ * When I was hardly 
twenty-one years of age I was initiated in a lodge 
in New York, which was distinguished for the 
respectability of its members. * * My confi- 
dence that they would not have done anything 
wrong induced me to pass through the required 
forms with very little — too little — consideration. 
A like deference for the example of others led 
me from step to step with the same inconsider- 
ateness."^ As to the example of Washingto^i 
and other great men who were members of se- 
cret societies, *' I should have been awed by their 
opinions could I be sure that these patrons, of 
whom masonry so justly boasts, deliberately ex- 
amined the merits of the institution ; but when 
I reflect how many years of my life were passed 
before I gave the subject due consideration, I 
cannot but suppose that they, like myself, for a 
long time may have been content to rest on the 
example of their predecessors, and that they 
have left their successors free to express their 
opinions." 

Much of the support, again, is only virtual, not 
active. Men have belonged to a society in 
younger days ; whatever its faults, there are few 

' College Pamphlets, Yale Library, Vol. gi, Anti-Masonic 
Address to People of New York, pp. 22, 23. 



Io8 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

who do not retain some affection for their so- 
ciety, and they also think that honor requires 
them to support it, or at least say nothing which 
may bear against it. It is to be said, further, 
that this does not decide the question, though it 
has an important bearing upon it. Almost 
^very bad system has had good supporters, 
sometimes a great many of them. Witness the 
record made by so many good men on the sub- 
ject of slavery. 

The nature of a college community presents 
some special difficulties in the way of reform^ 
where a system is once established. The stu- 
dents are these who feel the evils most. No man 
really understands what this system means un- 
less it exists among his equals or his superiors. 
But the students are in college a very shoi-t time, 
comparatively. They come at an early age, when 
few of them have any definite opinions on a sub- 
ject like this. Consequently, they are ready to 
take the current ideas of their institution ; and 
those who do not take these, often arrive at their 
own conclusions so late as to make their influence 
of little value. Yet in some instances much has 
been done by the students; and it certainly is 
very greatly to be desired that they should 
themselves think fairly and act rightly on this 
question. Probably a large part of the evils in 
the present system could be m.ade to disappear 
simply by the removal of the one bar of secrecy. 

Before closing, I wish to warn the societies, 
and particularly the more earnest men, of whom 
they include so many, that in refusing to reply 
to these arguments they are leaving many a 
conscientious young man, where this system is 
dominant, to struggle with doubts of a very 



THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. IO9 

grave kind, and perhaps to sacrifice his con- 
science to their inducements. If the ideas here 
set forth are wrong, they should be set right ; 
and for the sake of the many young men to 
whom this is an important, if not a vital, ques- 
tion, I demand that if these conclusions are 
false, some of the able thinkers in the societies 
state why they are false, and what the truth is ; 
and perhaps also they may lead us all to take 
part in extending the system, if it can be shown 
beneficial to mankind. If they include men who 
are public teachers, I ask them to teach the pub- 
lic on this question. The excuse of the socie- 
ties' being secret cannot be taken; for though 
a defense would abate something of their strict- 
ness, they could discuss many general principles. 
My present conviction, however, is that this is 
an abominable system ; could it be swept from 
every college campus and every community in 
the land, I believe there would be reason for 
great rejoicing. Would that some mighty blast 
could open all this secrecy and darkness to the 
free winds of thought and the sunshine of God's 
truth! But the question for those who op- 
pose the system which has been discussed is not 
whether it can be entirely abolished, in the first 
instance, desirable as they may think such a re- 
sult ; but whether matters cannot be so changed 
that it shall lose some of its objectionable fea- 
tures, or at least cease to be the system which is 
dominant over everything. There seems to be 
no reason why such a change may not be brought 
about; but there are difficulties to be met, and 
it might take time. It would be one step in the 
general progress of the colleges toward more 
true and manly ideas of college life. 



no THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 

As the earth turns toward the sun in her 
course, and his kindly influences soften for all 
good seeds and growths the frost-bound soil, 
which no instrument of steel could make fer- 
tile, so may the minds of the young men of this 
generation turn toward the greater Sun of truth, 
and be made ready for larger and nobler and 
more generous thinking and living in the light 
of His coming day. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 150 608? 



